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DIAZ THE DICTATOR 

A Story cf International 
Intrigue and Politics 



BY CHARLES LINCOLN PHIFER 

Author of "The Friar's Daughter" 
to which this is a sequel 



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1910: 

PUBLISHED BY C. L. PHIFER 
GIRARD. KANSAS 






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Note. — The reason so much is charged for a single copy is because 
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The Friar^s Daughter 

A story of the American occupation of the Philippines. 
Same size as "Diaz the Dictator," which is a sequel to it, 
40c each, by express., prepaid; $3 for 15, by express, pre- 
paid, 



The Truth of the Story 



I BEiviEVE this story is true in the same sense that 
Shakespeare's historical plays are true, that is, it is inter- 
preting history rather than writing it. It is admitted that 
conversation is invented in order to bring out certain points ; 
but Shakespeare invented conversation. It is admitted that 
events are sometimes put out of their real order of occur- 
rence, and sometimes several occurrences are made to ap- 
pear in one action; but Shakespeare did this when he 
thought it desirable in order to develop a cHmax or pre- 
vent there being too many scenes. It is admitted that ficti- 
tious names are used, and sometimes the experiences of 
several are ascribed to one person, thus making a compos- 
ite character; but Shakespeare introduced composite char- 
acters and even fictitious characters into his historical plays. 
Nevertheless, it is beUeved that this, like Shakespeare's 
historical plays, is in a sense truer than history itself. It 
considers the racial and hereditary instincts, of the actors, 
which things hardly come within the perview of history. 

The object of this story is to help awaken a sentiment 
that will lead to the overthrow, not only of Diazism, but 
also of all exploitation. It is as wicked for capitalists and 
rulers to kill and rob others by process of law as it is for 
the burglar and highwayman to kill and rob contrary to law. 
Yet this does not single out Diaz as the one criminal of 
his age. They who prepare for war in any country, they 
who maintain a system of exploitation, may well defend 
Diaz, for they are one with him. Yet, for the very reason 
that I recognize that many who champion the present 
system of exploitation and oppression are good at heart and 
do some meritorious things, I am free to accord to Diaz 
merit in some lines and many personal virtues coupled 
with his rotten public life. He is not wholly to blame even 
for his crimes, for the reason that they who crucified Christ 
were not wholly to blame. ''They know not what they do." 

Men of this class have also done a needful work. 



They are barbarians and criminals of course, but if there 
was not room for them — indeed, if there was not need for 
them at this time — they would not have been here. Some 
day the world will not tolerate them, but so long as they 
remain their right to be here is as well attested as the right 
of the weed and the wild beast to be here. 

They probably think themselves right, and imagine 
their deeds are meritorious. And, despite their exploita- 
tion and oppression, they have helped to develop the world 
to the point where they become unnecessary. There can 
be no question as to how the future will regard them, but 
they should be credited with the good qualities and inten- 
tions which they really possess, just as the slave holder is 
entitled to credit for some good qualities and just as the 
barbarians of Alarec's time possessed certain virtue or 
strength. 

Men will at the present excuse or accuse according as 
their personal interest lies or their temperament dictates. 
The man who is financially interested in the Diaz regime 
can excuse the severity recorded as necessary owing to 
peculiar conditions. On the other hand, the man who 
would profit from a change will see in Diaz a bloody tyrant 
who ought to be overthrown. Again, one person will see 
in the revolutionist a patriot, and another will think him 
a demagogue, according to the viewpoint, just as one per- 
son will see in Shakespeare's Brutus a patriot and another 
think him a rogue, or as one will think his character of 
Caesar a tyrant and another fancy him as a colossus. 

The abuses in the church recorded here are matters of 
record, just as they were when Shakespeare showed them 
in his play, and the revelation of these things in this story 
is no more an attack on religion itself than the story of 
Woolsey in Shakespeare is an attack on religion. 

Then this story is truer than history, not only that it 
presents several viewpoints instead of only one viewpoint, 
but also because it reveals causes — the development of m- 
dustry, the change of methods — which inspired the acts of 
those at the head of things and brought disaster to the 
victims. Under such a treatment of the subject men be- 
come mere exponents of ideas and creatures of time's de- 



velopment. Is Diaz either a great man or a bloodthirsty 
tyrant? Tfien it is because conditions made him so, and 
had he not been on hand to be moulded to that shape, an- 
other would have been. Are millions in Mexico ground 
into worse than slavery? It is inevitable that it should be 
so, not because of fataHsm or foreordination, but because, 
through a pecuHar train of circumstances, feudalism there 
met advanced capitalism, the Anglo-Saxon met the Span- 
iard and Indian, and peonage was logical to these combi- 
nations. Were the Indians maltreated and run extinct in 
Mexico? Admirers of Diaz, investors in Mexico, may 
show that this was logical and that the same thing hap- 
pened in the United States. It was hurried more in Mexico 
merely because capitalism had developed to the point where 
it was more powerful and assertive when it entered Mexico 
than it was when it invaded the Indian land in the states. 

In brief, in this book I neither attack or defend Diaz. 
I neither attack nor defend the churchmen who engage in 
politics. I do stand in defense of the Bible and of real 
religion. I do beheve that evil destroys itself and good 
succeeds at last. By the logic of development in Mexico, 
I argue that peonage must come to America. By the fact 
that the hierarchy has mixed with politics in other lands 
and other ages, I argue that conditions will cause it to 
do so, even more than at the present, in the United States, 
and that disaster will follow this action here as everywhere. 
But, by the logic of faith that good will triumph and that 
the evil has in itself germs of its own destruction, I know 
that Diazism and the creator of Diazism, capitalism, will 
both pass away, and the church when banished from poH- 
tics will be able to the better forward rehgion. So soon as 
it ceases to be to one's material interest to see as good these 
things I picture, they will cease to have defenders, and, 
while being then understood and partially excused as being 
logical to the times,, they will be listed as evidences of 
barbarism. 

This story, or rather, the last five chapters or fifth act 
of the drama, is a sequel to "The Friar's Daughter." Two 
of the leading characters of that book enter at this point 



and carry forward policies and plans which began in the 
story of the Philippines. 

In preparing this story I have drawn from recognized 
history ; from stenographic reports of the trial of Lincoln's 
assassins ; from papers of several presidents of the United 
States; from Carlo de Fornado's book; from writings of 
Shoaf , Murray and Turner ; from the Border Magazine and 
various newspaper and magazine articles ; and from per- 
sonal interviews with numerous Mexican revolutionists and 
residents of Mexico. It is recognized that the first widely 
read revelation of conditions in Mexico was made by the 
Appeal to Reason. Without boasting, it was partly my 
sensing of those conditions and their effect on the future 
of America which led the Appeal into making the exposures. 

C. L. Phipkr, 
Associate Editor Appeal to Reason. 



Diaz the Dictator 



CHAPTER I. 

^ MEXICO, THK LAND OF MANANA. 

"Manana," the people of Mexico would say. That 
meant tomorrow. The present was a dream to them; to- 
morrow they meant to do things. 

And Mexico had been as in a dream, a romance from 
the beginning. There was something unreal in the story 
of the olden Aztecs who lived in a communal plenty, ruled 
over by an absolute lord; in the ceremony in which the 
naked ruler rolled in golden sand until he glittered in the 
sun, and then washed the wealth off in the river; in the 
hill of shouting, the great pyramid from which the Inca 
proclaimed his laws. There was something wierd in the 
story of the founding of the City of Mexico — how the wan- 
dering Indians traveled far, looking for the sign of an eagle 
devouring a snake as a signal for them to build ; how at last 
the sign appeared in the midst of a lake; how they drove 
piles in the lake where the eagle had been seen, building 
huts on them and building land around them; how after 
three centuries they filled the lake and erected the City 
of Mexico which Cortez saw and conquered. There was 
something sinister in the rite performed yearly on the 
summit of the pyramid ; a youth and his sweetheart, know- 
ing nothing of their impending fate, were given all the 
money they wished and each permitted to be happy for a 
year in travel or as he or she desired, apart ; then they were 
wed, and on the second day, when they were supposed to 
be as happy as mankind can be, they were escorted to the 
pyramid; there the priests struck the youth to death, and, 
opening his bosom, tore the yet quivering heart out as an 
offering to their deity — a happy human heart. 

"That," said a writer later on, ''was a symbol showing 



10 DIAZ the: dictator. 

how the Indian, Diaz the Dictator, was to tear the heart 
from happy Mexico and offer it to the god of gold." 

But now Mexico was dreaming, and knew not her 
fate. The very conquest of the city by the leather-bus- 
kined Spaniards, mounted on horses that the Indians called 
gods, and driving the unresistng people by thousands to the 
river until their bodies clogged the channel, was like a 
dream. There was the unreality of a dream in the few 
horses and the long-horned cattle, escaped from the Span- 
iards, pressing to the north and breeding there great herds 
of ponies and mavericks for future men of a differing 
race to lasso and brand. 

And at this time life was a dream, a projected shadow 
of the old world and a past century on a screen of the 
new. Think of the Spaniards ruling the new land after 
feudal ideas. Rich dons who had seized the land and made 
serfs of the natives, living in sleepy ease and the luxury 
of the Orient. Taking siestas each day. Seizing, when 
their lust dictated, the daughters of the poor; grasping by 
force of arms the property of the weak. Priests more 
numerous than merchants ; churches in greater abundance 
than real homes, the homes of the dons ; churches built 
with great towers that contained living rooms for the 
families of the bell-ringers who were on duty half their 
time, keeping up a constant clamor and clangor of bells, 
the quivering towers being homes of — 

"The people — ah, the people, 

They who dwelt up in the steeple." 

Religious processions by day and night, often meeting each 
other, blocking the street and fighting for possession of 
them. Priests who served, and priests who openly drank 
and whored. 

Mexico was a repubHc, too. But Santa Anna took a 
long siesta after his unsuccessful effort to prevent Uncle 
Sam from stealing his territory. He made no effort to 
suppress the bandits who^ thronged the frontier. He per- 
mitted" the mayors, the jeffe politicos, and the governors lo' 
rule after feudal methods, seizing the property they cov- 
eted. Occasionally one of the dons would dream a dream. 



DIAZ THK DICTATOR. 11 

an ambition to become president, and - with all the forces 
he could muster would seek to seize the ofhce — in a re- 
public, you remember — and it required all the energy 
the long-time president Santa Anna could summon to repel 
these onslaughts against his prerogatives. There were no 
railroads in Mexico. The western frontier was an un- 
known region occupied by Indians who lived in peace, cul- 
tivated their fields and enjoyed plenty and a measure of 
civilization. Yet Mexico had her ''foreign possessions." 
The Philippine Islands belonged to her because a Mexican 
priest had taken possession of them, and was paying tri- 
bute at once to the Spanish dons of Mexico, the king of 
Spain and the Church of Rome. 

So lay the land of Manana — sleeping today, waiting 
to act tomorrow. 



12 DIAZ the: dictator. 



CHAPTER IL 

TAMING THK COLT. 
"PORFIRIO !" 

A youth with shaggy black hair, low brow, and bright 
beady eyes, came from around the corner of the house .'it 
the call. 

"Hold the colt while I teach him who is master here.'' 

The boy seized the halter and braced himself for the 
tug which he knew was coming. The father, a Spaniard 
who had been a priest but who had of late years made his 
living by trading in horses and breaking the wildest of the 
colts, seized a chain- whip, at the end of which was fastened 
a small spiked ball, and began laying it to the refractory 
colt. As the blows fell they brought blood, and the horse 
snorted and reared and tugged. But Porfirio hung to the 
halter with a tenacity which brooked no defeat, while his 
father lashed the plunging animal until he was worn out 
with the work of it. Then the colt stood bleeding and trem- 
bling with bloodshot eyes, straining at the rope, completely 
cowed. The boy was flushed and his beady eyes danced 
with the excitement. 

"Lead him away, Porfirio; I think he has learned his 
lesson." The lad led the thoroughly terrified colt to a 
shed and tied it, giving it some feed. At the same time 
he rubbed salt in its wounds and laughed when the animal 
winced. 

From here he wandered around the barn to the shady 
side where there was a cock of hay. On it he spied his 
younger brother Felix lying asleep. Porfirio laughed. He 
was planning a joke on Felix and enjoyed it in advance of 
its perpetration. Going into the barn, he emerged with a 
powder horn, and then, bending over his sleeping brother, 
he poured the wide, half-Indian nostrils full of the grains. 
A moment later he struck a match and applied it to the 
powder. There was a sound of hissing, then a dull ex- 
plosion, and Felix sprang to his feet with a scream, his 



DIAZ THE DICTATOR. ' 13 

face a mass of blood and shredded flesh. His nose had 
been blown away. It was more severe than Porfirio had 
anticipated, and, in fear of punishment, he started to sneak 
away. As he did so, his father, the horse-trading priest, 
came around the corner and confronted him. The man 
still had the chain whip in his hand. He was quick of per- 
ception in a way, and equally quick of action. In a flash he 
knew what had happened, and with a movement almost 
as rapid raised his whip and brought it down over the 
shoulders of the son. Blow followed blow. Blood streamed 
from the face and hands of the youth, and his beady eyes 
glittered, but he neither whimpered or cried for mercy. 

When he was bleeding freely the mother, an Indian 
of some refinement and feeHng, being of the old Aztec 
blood, came on the scene. She saw both sons bleeding, and 
the father, her husband, with the cruel chain-whip up- 
raised over Porfirio, and supposed that in a fit of temper 
the man had been flogging both. With a cry of anguish 
she rushed in, and, grasping the whip, tore it from his 
hands. With an oath, the man doubled his fist and struck 
her full in the face. As she fell on the ground he walked 
away. 

The mother got up, and, forgetful of herself, minis- 
tered to her two wounded sons. In the course of her work 
she learned how Felix had come by his wound that was 
destined to disfigure him for fife, and turned reproachful 
eyes on Porfirio. It was to her greater sorrow than to 
feel the father had lacerated both, for it showed her that 
Porfirio had inherited the disposition of the father who 
had made her life a sorrow and terror. Tears came into 
her eyes and she groaned aloud. 

That night Porfirio could not sleep. It was not so 
much the pain of his wounds that kept him from slumber, 
for he had learned to despise suffering; but the look in 
his mother's face troubled him. He felt he could not face 
her. To avoid this he planned to run away, not realizing 
that this action would only make her sorrow greater. He 
knew only that he had hurt her and wanted to get away 
so he would hurt her no more. In the morning she pre- 



14 DIAZ Til]? DICTATOR. 

pared breakfast and called him, but he came not. The 
father seized his whip and started for the bed, but Por- 
firio escaped the lash this time, for he could not be found. 



DIAZ the: dictator. 15 

CHAPTER III. 

THE P^OR KS NADA. 

Gkneral PoRFiRio Diaz marched proudly at the head 
of his regiment. He was commander of fifty boys Hke 
himself and had assumed the title of general, which was 
duly accorded him by the people. This was on account 
of his youth and because it was regarded as a play regi- 
ment. The army he commanded was called the Peor es 
Nada, which meant "worse than nothing." But the boys 
took themselves very seriously. They had the military 
spirit and were rebellious against nearly everything. The 
general with the shock of black hair and beady bright eyes 
preached revolt against the government and against the 
church, against the aristocratic jefes politicos, against the 
Americans who were beginning to invade Mexico for busi- 
ness purposes, and talked loudly of Mexico for the Mexi- 
ment. The army he commanded was called the Peor es 
Nada, the aristocrats ignored it, the priests took it in sports, 
but the people, while not daring to revolt themselves, un- 
derstood the need of reform, and rather encouraged the 
play-war of the boys. 

At that time Mexico was religious to the point of 
being burdensome. There was a church or a convent in 
every block. Somew^here church bells were ringing at all 
hours. Processions were constantly parading the streets. 
The devout Mexican could not find time from his religious 
obligations for the duties of making a Hving. The most 
ardent Catholics were dissatisfied with the multiplicity of 
church services and were ready to protest. They would 
not themselves revolt, but they were willing to lend en- 
couragement to the boys in their protest. The police sol- 
diers of the jeffe politicos would sometimes chase the Peor 
es Nada, and there would be bloodless battles in which 
clubs and the flat of swords would be used, and these ex- 
ercises kept the boys wrought up with the feeling that 
they were real soldiers. Yet, though both tolerated and 



16 DIAZ THK DICTATOR. 

encouraged, the youth found many of the hardships of real 
warfare. In that warm dimate it was not so hard to sleep 
out, and the fact that they did made the play seem more 
real to them; but their uniforms were rags, their arms 
were discarded weapons which would hardly serve for 
killing the game that helped to supply their commissary; 
yet they hung together and half starved for several years, 
marching from one state to another, preaching revolt, fight- 
ing among themselves, Don Quixotes of a latter day. For 
the most part they were boys who had no parents or who 
had left home on account of abuse and who were not 
missed when gone. In any other country or at any other 
time they would have been as impossible as they were in- 
congruous. But in the Spanish- American countries where 
bandits were common and where something of feudal con- 
ditions yet prevailed, it was not only possible but became 
a fact. 

Then came the first serious adventure of the boys. 
They were toiling up a mountain one day with General 
Porfirio Diaz in the lead. Their purpose was to capture 
the bandit Oragan, who, with his followers, had been way- 
laying travelers and robbing them of their possessions, 
sometimes capturing some and holding them for ransom. 
The Peor es Nada were wearily plodding along under the 
broiling sun when there was the click of a gun hammer 
just ahead of them, accompanied with the sharp com- 
mand, "Halt!" 

"Halt !" commanded General Diaz, and the company 
came to a standstill, while some sank on the grass at the 
side of the road to rest during the parley which they felt 
to be inevitable. 

From behind a clump of bushes just ahead, a man '.n 
gaudy velvet, red sash, and monster sombrero, stepped 
into the road and examined the boys quizzically. He was 
joined by others of his party. 

"Pretty hungry, aren't you, boys?" asked the chief of 
the bandits. 

"Almost famished," responded one of the boys eagerly. 



DIAZ THK DICTATOR. ' 17 

"Silence !" commanded General Diaz. "Let me do the 
parleying." 

Diaz, yet a mere boy, was severe as his father had 
been severe. His roving, beady eyes saw everything, and 
he was prone like a flash to launch himself on a recalci- 
trant, swift as a cat on her prey, and with a heavy paw. 
They feared him as the colt had learned to fear his father. 
There were no further interruptions. 

The bandit chieftain bowed. "Now that you have 
captured us, General Diaz," he said, "it seems to me the 
best thing to be done is to sample our commissary." 

"If you insist," replied the general, as his eyes gleamed. 

"Of course. Sit down and rest while dinner is in 
preparation." 

The bandit gave a command to one of his men, who 
departed for camp to see that dinner was prepared. Then 
he remarked : 

"It seems to me that you are not making much out 
of your patriotism." 

General Diaz glanced at his uniform, and straightened 
with pride. "We endure hardships," he said, "Hke good 
soldiers. When we shall have obtained liberty for the 
people, then we will have our reward." 

"Certainly. You are to be president of Mexico, I 
presume ?" 

"Do you think I deserve the honor?" . 

"Who could deserve it more than one who has strug- 
gled long, as you have done? You are the first in the 
field, and I name you for president of Mexico." 

General Diaz flushed with pleasure, and his beady eyes 
fairly glittered. 

"It was a good thing you captured us when you did," 
resumed the bandit. "It may be. several years before the 
tyranny is overthrown and you become president, and in 
the meantime we can see that you do not lack for clothing, 
food or shelter. I shall take pleasure in helping to supply 
the future president and his army." 

"But you are a bandit." 

"Merely a name. My business is to levy tribute off 
of foreigners who may come to Mexico for the purpose 



18 DIAZ the: dictator. 

of levying tribute of profits from our countrymen. I am 
fighting the same battle you are, only in a different way. 
After awhile the people will be ready to fight and then 
I shall join you and we will battle shoulder to shoulder. 
It is the wise thing to join our forces now. In warfare 
foraging is not robbery." 

"I hadn't thought of that," mused General Diaz, much 
impressed. 

"So henceforth we are to fight together. I will see 
that you and your valorous army do not suffer, and when 
you become president of Mexico, you are to remember the 
good turn we have served you. What say you, boys?" 

The rank and file of the Peor es Nada was about to 
break into applause as a sign of approval, but General 
Diaz checked them. They were afraid to disobey him. 
for the son of the man who wielded the chain-whip was 
a strong discipHnarian. 

"It is proposed that we fight for Mexican freedom 
with these men here, and maintain ourselves from tributes 
levied off of foreigners. They are to fight our battles, and 
when I become president of Mexico I shall remember all 
who fought the battles of their country. All who favur 
this arrangement by which we become victors, salute." 

The entire company held up their hands. 

General Diaz called his company into marching form, 
and when they were so arranged, saluted Oragan, the 
bandit. 

"We are ready," he said. 



Peor es Nada — Worse than nothing. 

Jeffe PoUHcos — Mayors, rich men appointed by the president. 



DIAZ the: dictator. 19 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE tribute: takers. 

At a cetrain period in the history of Mexico bandits 
were prevalent. It was at the same periods when road 
agents were holding up stages in the sparcely-settled re- 
gions of the United States. But the Mexican bandit was 
a different type of individual and was regarded differently 
from the American highwayman. The one was an out- 
law, hiding in the fastnesses and nearly always ending his 
life at the hands of ofhcers of the law, or at the end of a 
rope in the hands of vigilantes. The other was a pictur- 
esque individual, more or less respected by the common 
people, levying tribute off the rich in defiance of the gov- 
ernment. 

Mexicans were oppressed from two sources. The 
jeffe politicos, or mayors, had a playful way of paying 
their debts by sending out soldiers who were supposed to 
serve them as individuals, and who compelled the popu- 
lace to pay tribute to their masters ; and the CathoHc 
priesthood exacted tithes, beside all the free-will offerings 
it could obtain. The mayors lived luxuriously and often 
licentiously; it is said that many of them were addicted 
to the habit of seizing on whatever woman pleased their 
fancy, compelhng her to serve their Vv^ish; and there was 
no redress. The priests claimed to live in seclusion, pov- 
erty, and chasticy, but it was rumored that they had secret 
passages from conventos to nunneries ; and that fat old 
monks were feasting and drinking together when it was 
supposed that they were fasting and praying in secret. 
Popular fancy whispered of priceless treasures which they 
had hidden in the secret ways built by the Indians, who, 
after their work, were banished to Yucatan, or perchance 
walled in the caves they had dug. Fifty years after the 
period mentioned, historic Alamo in Texas was found to 
be connected by underground passages with monasteries 



20 DIAZ THK DICTATOR. 

eight miles away ! Houston and Crockett might have es- 
caped had they known. 

Priest and mayor levied tribute from the poor, some- 
times exacting all they had. But the bandits laid their 
tribute on the rich, giving to the poor in their need. It 
is small wonder the poor considered them as less repre- 
hensible than mayors and priests, warning them of danger 
and receiving them as friends. Rustic dances were at- 
tended by bandits gorgeously robed and adorned, who were 
favorites with the girls because of their appearance, their 
dash and romance that attached to them. Often the young 
women were persuaded to accompany bandit lovers to the 
mountains. There were few of the bandits who did not 
have a mistress ; and the secret places of the mountains 
were scenes of revelry and of unbridled love. 

Foremost in the levying of tribute, boldest in love, 
and most feared and honored of the gentry of the high- 
way, was Porfirio Diaz. His brother, Felix, called the 
flat-nosed, Chato, was with the band now, but was not so 
popular on account of his lacerated and unsightly nose. 
The Peor es Nada had lost significance and place in 
memory. 

The mistress of Diaz was as faithful to him as though * 
she had been truly his wife. She believed in him, and not 
only taught him letters, but also told him many things 
from history, giving him lessons in decorum, self-restraint 
and in practical poHtics. Never had he another such ad- 
viser. She bore him a daughter, and to his credit be it 
said that he never disowned the offspring of their love. 
Under the belief his mistress had taught him that a great \ 
man should be personally virtuous, he wrote out, signed, 
and carried with him the following pledge: 

"I will from this on abstain from gambling. 

"1 will not drink mescal or use tobacco. 

"I will not waste my time in attending bull fights or 
cock fights. 

"I will be president of Mexico." 

"Porfirio," said Oragan to the man who, according to 
his tale, had captured an entire bandit gang, "when you 



DIAZ the: dictator. 21 

are president are you going to have us hung? If we get 
you to the office that would hardly be fair." 

Another person would have jested over the matter and 
threatened Oragan, but Porfirio could not view this sub- 
ject save in a serious light, so he answered: 

''You are no worse than the priests and the jeffe poli- 
tic os, and they have political power." 

''Good," returned Oragan. "I take it, then, that you 
mean to appoint us to office and give us land. How would 
I look as a respectable owner of a hacienda?" 

"I don't know as to office," said Diaz guardedly, "but 
if you should fight for me so as to make me president, 
it seems that you would be entitled to a place as govern- 
ment soldiers." 

"That is kind," replied the bandit. "Of course we, 
being bandits, are not worthy of office like that we ex- 
pected to give you. Your terms are Hberal, Porfirio. I 
will speak to my friends concerning our plans." 

He did speak to other bandits, and great was the 
merriment over the aspirations and liberaHty of the future 
president. The jests that were made at his expense served 
to pass the time; but Diaz took them seriously, and as 
they deferred to him and spread his fame among all the 
bandits, he assumed new dignity, for his dream seemed 
to be working to fulfillment. 



Hacienda — A large farm. 



22 DIAZ the: dictator. 

CHAPTER V. 

Ri:VOI.UTlON. 

In a country where bandits and mayors did as they 
pleased, of course there were revolutions. Many who were 
ambitious for political power gathered together a few 
friends, bought discarded arms in the United States and 
made effort to seize the reins of power. Santa Anna was 
not able to repel the invading army of Uncle Sam or to 
prevent the taking away of a large slice of Mexico's terri- 
tory ; but it was not difficult to quell these rebeUions, seeing 
that most of them were so puerile as to be scarcely heard of 
by the masses of the people. Yet in the end, the repeated 
attacks, coupled with accumulating age, doubtless weakened 
the once virile general, Santa Anna. 

It was inevitable that sometime a successful revolution 
must come. Feudal ways, though existing under form of 
a republic where the president apparently had life tenure, 
was giving way all over the world before a growing capi- 
talism. In the United States this capitalism was even at 
that time beginning to grapple with chattel slavery; and 
in Mexico, even, there was growing dissatisfaction which 
was certain, some day, to flower into change. 

So when Benito Jaurez inaugurated his rebellion the 
old apathy which had characterized previous attempts gave 
way to public interest. Perhaps it was because Jaurez was 
recognized both as a patriot and a man of vigor — qualities 
other revolutionists did not possess ; perhaps the dissatis- 
faction was riper because of the passage of time; perhaps 
it was because of the action taken by the bandit chieftains. 

It happened in this way : After the rebellion of Jaurez 
was under way Oragan said to his men : 

''Our time has come to deliver Mexico from her petty 
oppressors and to become patriots and respectable. I have 
been consulting with other of our chiefs, and we are all of 
one mind. We think it is our duty to join Benito Jaurez 
and make him president of Mexico." 



DIAZ the: dictator. 23 

"Si, senor," said the other bandits, "we are ready." 

All but Porfirio Diaz. He flushed and hotly said: 

*'I thought I was to be made president of Mexico." 

Oragan's eyes twinkled with humor as he answered: 
*'So you are, Porfirio; but not now. Jaurez comes first." 

''And why is that?" bellowed Diaz. 

"Well, for one thing, you will promise only to make 
us soldiers. Jaurez will do better than that." 

Diaz sneered: "I suppose you would want me to 
take the lands from the priests and give them to you." 

''Si, senor," roared the bandits in unison, thoroughly 
enjoying the situation. 

"And make outlawry respectable; and let you levy 
tribute off the people by law, and take to yourselves every 
woman who pleased you." 

"►S**, senor," screamed the company. 

"And have you dictating to me what I should do, while 
I stood with my hands tied before you." 

"Si, senor," again roared the bandits. 

Diaz's lips curled in scorn and he hissed at them : 
"Traitors !" 

The bandits laughed. But Oragan became concilia- 
tory. 

"Porfirio," he said, "you cannot step a mile at a stride. 
The people would not permit a bandit to become president. 
Let us seat Juarez in the chair, then he will appoint us all 
to high offices, and from that place, with our help, you 
can easily step into the place you wish. It is only a short 
wait and the only practical thing to do." 

Diaz sulked. He even wept, while his beady eyes 
glittered. But his mistress, wise as she was faithful, ad- 
vised him to yield for the present. 

"Perhaps," said she, "you will climb over the others 
during the war. At least you may become acquainted 
with the rich and the powerful, and, if wisely used, such 
acquaintance is valuable." 

"But it means a long wait." 

"Patience, Porfirio. If you should gain anything with- 



24 DIAZ the: dictator. 

out preparation for it, you would not know how to handle 
it. You must study, and war shall be your school." 

Diaz yielded to her wisdom, and joined the bandits 
when they espoused the cause of Juarez and the people. 
It was the first time all the bandits had been thrown to- 
gether in interest; it gave them training in the rules of 
war. It made them patriots in the sight of the aroused 
people, and all their past faults were forgotten in the light 
of their popular service. Diaz was still too crude, too 
much of a savage, to especially distinguish himself, yet he 
did the service of a faithful hitter; and, what none of the 
other bandits did, he kept his roving, beady eyes open and 
was learning. The lay of the country, the manners and 
ways of the various classes, the advantages that might be 
taken of natural resources, all came under his observation. 
His faithful mistress accompanied him and taught him ! 

"You must keep the bandits scattered, lest they be- 
come a menace to you," she told him once; "but wisely 
used as soldiers they will some day serve you as they now 
serve Juarez." And Diaz remembered. 

"When you become president," she said again, "you 
must make the ambitious your servants, by appointing them 
to office; and that the heads of the parties and factions 
be given equal power so that they may defeat each other 
and so strengthen you." 

"If you would be always powerful, get money," she 
advised again. "Then, though you may lose your office, 
you can say who shall be president. You must also see 
that they praise you in the churches and the papers, for 
these are strong influences to either make or spoil a repu- 
tation. If any attack you — " 

But Diaz interrupted. He said: "I will tame them 
with a loaded whip as father tamed the colt." 



-Yes. Senor — Mr. 



DIAZ THE DICTATOR. 25 



CHAPTER VL 

SUCCKSS AND ]?AILURE. 

In HIS CAMPAIGN, Diaz met Pablo Pueblo, a million- 
aire planter, who, a society leader, admired the primitive 
capacity of the uncouth captain. 

"If I could do what he can, or if he knew what I 
know," remarked Pueblo to a friend, "there would be a 
Washington or a Bonaparte." 

Diaz fought on, learning and gaining in reputation, 
until the revolution was successful and Benito Juarez be- 
came president. Juarez was a type of what might be 
known as the small capitalist, which, at the time of his 
ascendancy, was coming into dominance, not only in Mex- 
ico, but also in the United States and Europe ; and he was 
logical to the interest of that class. A constitution was 
adopted in accordance with the ideas of the times, modeled 
after the American palladium. In accord with the phi- 
losophy of the small capitalist Juarez encouraged the break- 
ing up of feudal conditions, and the division of haciendas 
into small farms. Half the houses in Mexico City were 
owned by priests. Under the encouragement of Juarez 
small capitalists from the United States within five years 
erected 20,000 more dwellings, which broke the church mo- 
nopoly. With 146 monasteries, 59 nunneries, 1,500 monks 
and 3,000 to 4,000 priests in the national capital, there was 
a never-ending religious procession, a never-ceasing clang- 
ing of bells. Juarez stopped the processions and the bell- 
ringing, thus affording the communicants more time for 
work and better opportunity for repose. Three- fourths 
of the land of Mexico was held by the priests, who had 
re-established a sort of feudal system with the serfs trans- 
formed into equally helpless peons hired for wages, yet 
tied to the land by debts which it was seen to that they 
contracted. Juarez confiscated most of this land and turned 
it into commons, which the people were encouraged to 
cultivate as they wished without purchase. This gave free- 



26 DIAZ the: dictator. 

dom to the peons and began to develop a class of inde- 
pendent farmers — a ''middle class." Juarez further en- 
couraged American capital to invest in Mexico. At that 
time those who responded were what came to be known 
as "small capitaHsts." They built the first railroad in the 
"land of Manana," and developed several other enterprises. 
Juarez also, with heavy hand, stopped the exactions of the 
jeffe politic OS, and the tribute which bandits had been wont 
to levy from travelers. The people began to prosper; but 
some of those affected by government, that government, 
were mortally offended. 

Most brooding of the malcontents was General Pori- 
firio Diaz. The bandits, including himself, had so far re- 
deemed themselves in his eyes and in the eyes of the peo- 
ple that they had up to this time been permitted to remain 
in the army. But they were not given offices, as Oragan 
had led Diaz to expect, and now that order had been re- 
stored and the government put on a stable basis Jaurez 
announced his intention of reducing the army. 

"But what will become of me and my soldiers ?" asked 
General Diaz of the new president. 

"You may cultivate the lands which have been opened 
to you," was the reply. 

"But I have never done these things. They are be- 
neath the dignity of a soldier." 

"Washington left the field of war and retired to a 
farm. Because you have not done the work of peace is all 
the more reason why you should do it now. Mexico is 
worn out with war. She needs to be rid of the burden of 
armies that she may recover prosperity." 

"For one, I do not propose to dig and plod. Farmers 
and artisans are always underlings." 

"Warriors have o'erridden them. It must be so no 
longer." 

"Mexico belongs to the soldiers who have saved her. 
The generals at least are entitled to good positions under 
the government." 

"Mexico belongs to the soldiers who have saved her 
because this includes all the people, not a part of them. 
But war is only a temporary need, not a permanent employ- 



DIAZ the: dictator. ^"^^ 

ment. I am heartily glad the need of it is gone. As for 
officers for leaders in the army, they shall have their pay, 
as the common soldier shall have his. God forbid that I 
should burden the people with more officers than are needed. 
I will reward you according to your deserts, and I shall 
rejoice to see it so." 

"Jaurez, beware!" cried Diaz in anger. "I am used 
to taking that which I want, and I have an army behind 
me now." 

"Do you mean that, Porfirio?" asked the president, 
rising. 

"Do I seem to be smiling because my sword is about 
to show its teeth? Why do you ask, Benito Jaurez?" 

"Because (stepping to the door and motioning to a 
guard there) I shall arrest you for treason if you mean it. 
I might have you shot, Porfirio; but I would be more leni- 
ent with you. I shall only banish you, and shoot you if 
you return." 

The guard seized Diaz and hurried him to a boat in 
the harbor which was ready to depart for New Orleans. 
Before he returned his mistress was dead. 

So ends the first part of this story from life, Uke the 
falling of a curtain on a complete drama. Yet it was only 
one act of the real drama that was being enacted, on 
what the participants supposed was their own volition. 



28 DIAZ the: dictator. 

CHAPTER VIL 

PERSONAI, AMBITION. 

At A CHEAP boarding house in New Orleans Colonel 
Breen came upon a Mexican refugee and introduced him- 
self. He had gained the title from having killed thirteen 
Apaches single-handed in defense of a mining prospect in 
Arizona. Yet after this feat he had deemed the land too 
hot for him, in a metaphorical sense, and had drifted to 
New Orleans looking for someone to grubstake him for 
further work. Even a Mexican refugee was worth trying, 
so he began : 

"Any silver in Mexico, stranger?" 

"Plenty of it. Did you never hear of Montezuma's 
mine, and how the Incas used to roll in silver until they 
glittered in the sun?" 

"But can you put me where I can find it?" 

"Easily enough." An idea began to form in the mind 
of the Mexican of using Colonel Breen to get him back to 
his native land. So he added: "I must be back in Mex- 
ico before I can do it." 

"And you want me to pay your way? I am looking 
for someone to grubstake me." 

"I am looking for someone to smuggle me back to 
Mexico. I have been banished. H I go back and am 
caught, it is death." 

"Then I would remain here." 

"But if I win I shall be president of Mexico." 

"Oh, I see. And then you will be in a situation to 
aid me." 

"Yes." 

"And will you do so?" 

"I will." 

"Well, I know a captain who will take you there. I 
will see you started and then if I can borrow enough 
money on my prospective mines to keep me in grub for 
the summer I will go to Mexico overland and call on 



DIAZ THK DICTATOR. 29 

you if I don't find the silver myself. Your address will 
be—" 

''After the battle, at Mexico City, in the president's 
mansion." 

On a vessel which sailed for Mexico the next day was 
a dark-skinned man who said Httle and kept close to his 
stateroom. There were no noteworthy incidents on the 
voyage, but when they came to the harbor they saw a dou- 
ble line of soldiers on the shore and a boat put forth to- 
ward them bearing two officers in uniform. 

Somehow the captain was informed that they were 
looking for a refugee and at once suspicioned his dark- 
skinned companion. 

"Tell me, who you are?" he asked. 
"Diaz is my name. Porfirio Diaz." 
"Are you a refugee?" 

"I am. I was banished, and if they capture me it is 
death — for me." 

"And investigation and endless trouble for me." 
"Yes." 

Just then the Mexican, who had been closely scanning 
the shore, saw something which clearly gave him assur- 
ance. Turning to the captain he said: 

"Give me a life preserver and they will not find me." 
The captain gave him the preserver, and passengers 
and crew were all intent on watching the maneuvers on 
shore, so that no one noticed him as Diaz dropped into the 
seas from the side of the ship opposite. He held to the 
preserver so only his face was above water and with one 
hand paddled farther out to sea and toward the north. 

The officers searched the boat without finding their 
man. In the meantime Diaz had passed so far from the ship 
that it was safe for him to pass the life preserver under 
his shoulder, and, lifting his head from the water, paddled 
with both hands. In a recess on shore, hidden from the 
city and the waiting troops, a man stepped into view of the 
refugee; thither the swimmer bent his strokes, until he 
emerged from the sea and joined the man. 

After greetings, the two went into a hollow in the 
wood adjacent and there concealed themselves until night. 



30 DIAZ THE DICTATOR. 

Under cover of darkness they made their way to the camp 
occupied by Oragan and his soldiers and bandits, and joined 
themselves to this company. Here the entire force was 
placed at the disposal of Diaz for war on Juarez. 

Then came an opera boueff rebellion. Oragon and 
Diaz, maintaining themselves again by brigandage, added 
foraging on the estates of the rich as their method of har- 
assing the administration. In addition Diaz wrote pom- 
pous letters to the President, making preposterous demands 
and ever assuming the air of master. 

Finally things became very discouraging for Diaz. He 
continued to launch grandiloquent demands at the govern- 
ment, he never faltered in his determination to be presi- 
dent sometime and somehow, but he became hard up. He 
was forced to temporarily disband his men and for a time 
make his living as a cub carpenter. In after years, when 
he became governor of Oxacala, he secured an uncouth 
chair which he had made with his own hands, and took 
great pride in exhibiting it as evidence that he had one 
time been a common laborer. 

Later, when he was pressed by the government troops 
he retreated in the Valle Nacional. A rich, beautiful val- 
ley, from two to five miles wide and twenty miles long, 
this is one of the most inaccessible places on earth. The 
high hills surrounding it are a tangle of trees and vines, 
through which one has to hew his way with the machette, 
and these are so filled with venemous snakes and insects 
that few venture to try the dangerous and perplexing climb. 
The only opening to the valley is a bridle path, which winds 
through close-set hills and often crosses a river that must 
be forded or swum. It was not more easy to protect the 
pass of Thermopulae than to keep men either out of or 
confined in the Vlalle Nacional if that result were desired. 
The government troops did not attempt to follow Diaz 
into the valley, nor did it try to pen him there. 

"What a fortress for bandits !" exclaimed one of his 
men when the chase was at an end. *'If it was only near 
a road where travelers pass a score could protect them- 
selves here for an age." 

"When I become president I will give it to my com- 



DIAZ the: dictator. 31 

pany who fight with me now," remarked Diaz. "Notice 
how rich the soil is." 

"Do you expect us to till the soil?" 

"It will not be necessary. I shall make this a penal 
colony and you can become rich by making them till the 
soil." 

The bandits looked around. The proposition appealed 
to them and assured their loyalty to Diaz. 

Juarez dispatched his soldiers against the guerrillas, 
but the soldiers showed no zest in combatting their former 
companions in arms. Some of them were led by former 
bandits, so that the rebellion, if it should be dignified with 
the word, continued a disturbing influence with Juarez 
for many months. 

One day, when the army of Diaz and Oragon, — an 
army consisting of some two hundred persons, some of 
them stragglers and women, — were in the mountains near 
the northern border of Mexico, a miner with the inevita- 
ble burro came to them. The miner proved to be Colonel 
Breen. 

"Do I address the president?" he asked in mock 
gravity. 

"You do," answered Diaz gravely. 

"Indeed?" inquired Colonel Breen. "Since when?" 

"Since tomorrow." 

The answer pleased Breen and he bowed very low. 
"I did not call on you for advice," he said, "because I 
knew you were busy; and I was able to find a fortune by 
myself." 

"You struck it, then?" 

"Yes." 

"Rich?" 

"A bonanza. Only it is copper instead of silver." 

He emptied his pockets of samples and distributed 
them among the bystanders. It was evidently of great 
richness. 

"Much of it?" asked Diaz. 

"A mountain full." 

"A third is mine for the commission." 

"The h — it is !" thundered the miner. 



32 DIAZ THi: DICTATOR. 

"The third now, or all tomorrow, when I am presi- 
dent." 

The miner reached for his pocket, but. was covered by 
Oragon before he could draw. 

''No more of that," said the old chieftain. "It's worth 
a third to protect your mine while you are gone. We 
stand together." 

"Oh, very well," assented the miner. "There is 
enough for me in two-thirds." 

"Only, my name is not to appear in this," remarked 
Diaz. 



DIAZ the: dictator. 33 

CHAPTER VIII. 

ONE USE OF RELIGION. 

The heirarchy was not pleased at its loss of power. 
It launched anathema after anathema at the new order. 
But Juarez stood firm. Then the Mexican priests carried 
their cause to Rome. The Vatican not only protested to 
Juarez, but laid the claim of the Mexican church before 
the faithful everywhere, who,, believing it an outrage, 
stirred an agitation that prejudiced all Europe against 
Juarez. At that time neither Spain nor France had dared 
to combat the church in the interference in temporal af- 
fairs ; and, while Juarez was disbanding the army, perfect- 
ing the public schools, and arranging an elaborate system of 
public improvements, even inducing American capital to 
build some railroads in Mexico, his reputation was assailed 
vigorously in Europe. He was represented as confiscating 
property, repudiating the public debt, and fostering dis- 
order and danger to property by disbanding the army. Ap- 
peal was made to Spain, a Catholic country which yet 
laid some claims to Mexico, on the ground that Juarez 
had repudiated a debt of $10,000,000, due the church for 
improvements made in the Philippines. France was pro- 
voked to hostility because it was represented that Juarez 
had repudiated a claim of $1,500,000 which a citizen of 
France had against Mexico. In reality. Napoleon III was 
anxious to obtain territory in the new world to compen- 
sate him for the loss of Louisiana, and thought that the 
time was opportune to realize this ambition while the 
United States was fully occupied by the civil war. Beside 
all this, some English bankers put in a claim for $5,000,000 
against Mexico, which debt, they claimed, was repudiated 
by Juarez. England was willing to cripple the influence 
of the United States in the new world, as evidenced by 
the privateers she had encouraged a short time previously. 

So England, France and Spain united to send a fleet 
to the Gulf of Mexico for the protection of the rights of 



34 DIAZ the: dictator. 

their citizens against the new republic of alleged repudia- 
tion. They arrived at Vera Cruz and telegraphed their 
demands to Juarez. Tlie latter replied by inviting the sev- 
eral admirals to a conference. They were received and 
entertained, and afterward they retired to confer. One by 
one, on invitation of Juarez, the admirals rehearsed the 
grievances of their countries, and then the Mexican presi- 
dent said : 

"You have been told but part. Taking the French 
claim first: During the final rebeUion in 1852, a street 
fight occurred in Vera Cruz, in which some irresponsibles 
did damage to a small bakery. The total loss could not 
have been more than a few hundred dollars, but the claim 
against us is $1,500,000. I do not object to paying dam- 
ages based on an inventory of the loss." 

The Spanish and English admirals exchanged swift 
glances, while the French admiral flushed. 

"Concerning the Spanish claim," continued Juarez, "in 
1832, Mexican Jesuits established the mission of Del Santa 
Rosario in the Philippines. The mission was not author- 
ized by the Mexican government and has never been rec- 
ognized as a government mission. I submit to you, there- 
fore, whether Mexico should be held for the $10,000,000 
claim for the support of this mission." 

Now the Spanish admiral flushed. His eyes flashed 
in anger ; yet he remained silent. Juarez continued : 

"During- the war with the United States in 1845, Man- 
uel Lazardi was sent to England by President Santa Anna 
for the purpose of negotiating a loan for $5,000,000. He 
borrowed the money and put it in his pocket; not one cent 
did Mexico get. But, as a means of obtaining the loan 
from which he alone profited, he signed an agreement by 
which the Mexican government was obligated to pay $5,- 
000,000 for the loan of $500,000, which it did not receive. 
Possibly we might be held for the half million, but the 
remainder was a fraudulent transaction." 

The English admiral was on his feet. "I be damned 
if I become a party to collecting a debt that was fostered 
by fraud!" he exclaimed, "I shall return to England to- 
morrow," 



DIAZ the; dictator. .15 

"And I shall return to Spain," replied the Spanish 
admiral. 

''And you?" asked Juarez of the French admiral. 

The Frenchman flushed. "Some of my men are sick," 
lie replied. *'We can scarcely return to France in our 
present condition." 

"If that is true, you may remain. The hospitals of 
Jalapa are at your service." 

The French admiral bowed low. "You are very kind," 
he said. "France will remember your consideration." 

So ended the conference. The sick were landed from 
the French ships and placed in the hospitals of which the 
French troops were permitted to practically take posses- 
sion. In the meantime the admiral communicated with 
Napoleon, who responded by sending reinforcements to 
the number of 4,500 soldiers, accompanied by General Al- 
monte and Father Miranda. 

"Nov/, strike the blow," said Father Miranda. "Issue 
your manifesto, and true Catholics v/ill flock to your stand- 
ard. We shall override the infidels as fewer under Cortez 
did before us." 

So the admiral proclaimed that the army had come 
from France in order to estabHsh order and obtain prop- 
erty in a country that had been at war for years, and call- 
ing in all who were loyal to the church to rally to its 
support. 

To his surprise there was no response. 



3G DIAZ Tlii: DICTATOR. 

CHAPTER IX. 

' MONEY AND PATRIOTISM. 

Oragon and his companions were astonished at the 
ease with which Diaz had obtained an interest in the mine. 
This astonishment was increased a month later, when Colo- 
nel Breen returned with some American capitalists, who 
put up for costly machinery to work the mine. And when, 
before the summer was over, returns began to come to 
Diaz in the way of dividends, astonishment became a sen- 
sation. 

"Why, in ten minutes that fellow held up Breen for 
more than we have taken in all our lives," said Oragon. 
"Boys, the joke has turned. He may be president yet." 

Forthwith, having learned the lesson from a man who 
didn't know it himself, that the new order of capitalism 
would be more productive in spoils than the old order of 
brigandage, the wiser of the bandits turned their attention 
to money-getting according to the new rules. Some of 
them laid claim to mining territory. Others seized on 
commons, appropriating it to themselves. Oragon seized 
a hacienda and the jcffc politico wlio owned it was un- 
able to dislodge him, while Juarez, having other enemies 
to consider, was unable to cope with this new and effective 
rebellion. Diaz himself began to see the power of money 
as a means to political preferment, and decided that Amer^ 
ican capitalists would become a means of developing Mex- 
ico and incidentally making them rich when he should be- 
come president of Mexico. 

As for Colonel Breen, he was not of the disposition to 
yield his mining rights had he not expected greater returns 
from so doing. His study of the situation, although he 
was illiterate, led him to believe that Diaz would some day 
be president of Mexico and he deemed it prudent to retain 
his friendship. 

In the meantime Diaz was rent with conflicting emo- 
tions. He loved hig country in a way. He was apprehen- 



DIAZ THE DICTATOR. 37 

sive of the attitude of the church and he disHked the church 
because he remembered his father. So many are capable 
of nothing but concrete reasoning. Besides, it appeared 
that Mexico was in danger of invasion by a foreign power, 
and between foreigners and natives he was for the native. 
He was hke the man who will beat his wife himself, yet 
defend her strenuously from attack by another. 

One day Jaurez was surprised to see Diaz enter his 
office. 

"Porfirio," he said, "1 warned you that it meant death 
for you to return." 

"I have been in Mexico for years," Diaz returned, 
"and I am still alive. I do not fear you, but I love my 
country. Now that foreign powers threaten Mexico I am 
come to offer you my services." 

"You, Porfirio Diaz?" 

''Why not? Did I not battle for my country when it 
was threatened before? Did I not battle by your side? I 
offer you not my services alone, but the aid of all who have 
been harassing you." 

''But can I trust you? Is this not a plot to seize the 
government for yourself?" 

"I give you my word of honor." 

"Then," said the president, "I give you my hand." 

And they clasped hands. 



38 DIAZ THi: DICTATOR. 



CHAPTER X. 

WAR IN THK DARKNKSS. 

JuARKz saw that this war was certain and inevitable. 
He cahed on all men from 31 to GO years of age to rally 
to the defense of the republic; threatening death to such 
as failed to respond. An army under General Oragon and 
with Diaz holding an inferior command, was dispatched 
against the French. At the same time the president called 
the United States to help him expel the European invaders ; 
but at that period, 1863, Uncle Sam had his hands too full 
to permit him to respond. 

The French advanced and attacked Pueblo, but the 
Mexican general, with 12,000 troops, defeated them. A 
few weeks later reinforcements to the number 30.000 came 
from France. With this force the French had laid seige 
to Pueblo. The defense was strong and persistent, lasting 
for three months. To add to the difficulties, cholera came 
and an epidemic of typhoid fever prevailed. One by one 
the French took the houses, advancing street by street, 
until it was quite evident that all was lost. Then Oragon 
surrendered, after spiking 150 guns, scattering his powder 
and breaking his fire-arms; but Diaz and a few of the 
soldiers escaped as refugees, one by one. 

It meant the end of the republic, and Juarez fled from 
the capital, retiring to San Luis Potosi. The French en- 
tered Mexico City in triumph, much as the Spanish had 
done under Cortez, and immediately called together thirty- 
five aristocrats of Mexico as the legislative body, while the 
French general, the archbishop of Mexico, and a Mexican 
general who cast his fortunes with the new government, 
became an executive triumvirate. This triumvirate con- 
vened a constitutional assembly composed of former land 
owners and clergymen, and on June 10, 1864, the assembly 
passed the resolution : 



DIAZ THE DICTATOR. 



The Mexican nation adopts for form of government a temperate 
and hereditary monarchy under a Catholic premier ; the sovereign will 
take the name of Emperor of Mexico ; the imperial crown will be 
offered to the Archduke Maximillion of Austria for himself and his 
descendants. 



The armies of the repubhc were scattered. Diaz, with 
a force of vasqueros or volunteers, retired to the south and 
maintained a guerrilla warfare, while Juarez, after being 
chased into Monterey, addressed a communication to Pres- 
ident Lincoln, offering to cede Sonora to the United States 
for help in restoring the republic and native rule. To the 
quaint little town of Cuidad he fled, and awaited there, but 
waited in vain, for intervention on the part of America. 

In April, 1864, Maximillian and the beautiful Char- 
lotte arrived in Mexico and assumed the throne. 

Maximillian sent an army on the trail of Diaz, which 
overtook him and administered a stinging repulse, scatter- 
ing the forces. The republic had been superceded by a 
"hereditary CathoHc monarch," and a brilhant court was 
established, where Charlotte shone as the most beautiful 
and most regal of American potentates. 

When Maximillion sent his representative to the 
United States, in April, 1864, President Lincoln refused 
to receive him, and congress promptly passed a resolution 
to the effect that it could not, under the Monroe doctrine, 
recognize a monarchy established in America by a Euro- 
pean power. This left no doubt as to the attitude of the 
United States and greatly encouraged the patriots ; al- 
though the fact that Maximillian's envoys were received 
at European courts mitigated the pangs this action brought. 
Thinking to conciliate the Mexicans, who, so far, had 
shown little disposition to rally to his support, the emperor 
refused to restore to the clergy the lands which Juarez 
had nationalized; but, rather than bringing the masses to 
his support, this alienated the clericals and reactionaries. 
His empire was not strong. And when, on February 9, 
1865, after it became evident that the United States had 
practically won in the civil war, President Lincoln, through 
Secretary Seward, called on France to withdraw her troops 



40 DIAZ the: dictator. 

from the western continent under penalty of having the 
vast American army then in the field turned into Mexico, 
the consternation was complete. 

Lincoln probably had a purpose in this action even 
beyond the restoration of the Mexican republic. More or 
less danger always attends the disbanding of an army 
after a severe war, and then, there was a breach in the 
United States which he had wanted to close. For more 
than a generation it had been the dream of the South to 
establish an empire of the Great Southwest, and probably 
Lincoln thought that in a war of sentiment in behalf of 
Mexico, Grant and Lee might join their forces and the 
bloody chasm that had opened at Mason and Dixon's line 
might be closed. It is not the only effort made to unite the 
armies of the North and South. Senator Stewart declares 
that, after this, congress had practically agreed on a plan 
for invading Canada with the united blue and gray, the 
pretext being England's attitude during the civil war, and 
the object being the acquisition of vast territory that would 
make the re-United States great indeed. 

But the effect of Lincoln's ultimatum was decisive. 
Napoleon called for a loan of $170,000,000, with which to 
carry on the war, but only $50,000,000 was subscribed. 
Even he saw the hopelessness of his case against the sea- 
soned army of Uncle Sam. France withdrew her troops 
from Mexico. It meant the end of the empire; and while 
Maximillian was too proud to leave himself, even though 
he knew it was disastrous to remain, it was only too evi- 
dent that the clericals, who had hoped to retain temporal 
power through the establishment of a Catholic monarchy 
in America, had lost and lost because of Lincoln's action. 

Then came the tragedy in America. On March 6th, 
plotting against the life of the American president and 
against Secretary Seward began, every plotter being a 
Catholic. April 14th Abraham Lincoln became a martyr 
— to what? 



NOTES. — Chinequay attempts to show motive for Lincoln's assassi- 
nation in a lawsuit that took place years before; but that motive seems 
inadequate. The motive herein given for the first time in print seems 
to be much more rational. The heirarchy in its fight on Socialism has 



DIAZ THK DICTATOR. ' 41 

represented it as bomb-throwing and assassination. It remains for the 
heirarchy to explain why every assassin of a president in the United 
States was a Catholic and none of them were Socialist. This is by no 
means an intimation that all Catholics are assassins, as the heirarchy 
tried to make men believe of all Socialists. The desire for power over 
others always leads to killing opposition, so that not only a power seek- 
ing heirarchy, but also power-seeking dictators have always been ready to 
kill men who stood in their way. The masses themselves have ever been 
innocent, if not victims of deception. In Mexico the fight was to enslave 
the Catholic laity, just as in Russia it is to enslave the people in general 
for the benefit of the few. 

In this connection, permit me to say that, after reading the steno- 
graphic report of the trial of Lincoln's assassins, I have reached the 
conclusion that Mrs. Surrett was innocent. Isaac Pittman, who made 
these reports, is equally positive that she was wrongly hanged. It seems 
only right that the American people shall, after having taken her life, 
do her the meager reparation of clearing her reputation. And Mrs. 
Surrett was a Catholic. 

That this view of the situation which held the Roman heirarchy 
responsible for the death of Lincoln was general at the time is evident 
from state papers. Grant, in every message he sent to congress, warned 
the people against ecclesiasticism and the danger to the public schools, 
and Thomas Nast cartooned him as trampling on the pretensions of the 
pope to temporal power, Nast being a republican and supporter of Grant. 
Indeed, every republican president up to Garfield, in at least one state 
paper, warned of the danger of ecclesiasticism. 



42 DIAZ the: dictator. 

CHAPTER XL 
the: new republic. 

Now arose: the star of Mexican independence. Amer- 
icans poured over the Rio Grande and joined the armies 
of Juarez. In his extremity MaximiUian proposed to sell 
the lands of the clergy in order to obtain means of carry- 
ing on the war, but the pope refused his permission for 
the sale. Thinking to strike terror to the rising revolu- 
tionists, MaximiUian had Areaga and Salazar, two patriots 
whom he had captured, shot; but so far from bringing 
dismay to the opposition, the act brought hundreds of 
others into the field. Apaches and Opatas joined with the 
Mexicans. Empress Charlotte went to France to solicit the 
aid of Napoleon, expecting to be received with royal hon- 
ors ; but she was met merely by a police escort, and the 
shock to her pride, as well as the reahzation that it meant 
the end of her dream of glory, unbalanced her mind. Ever 
since then she has been imprisoned in a palace belonging 
to her brother, King Leopold of Belgium (instigator of the 
Congo outrages), playing queen, doctors her courteriers, 
nurses her maids in waiting. News of the calamity which 
had befallen his brilliant wife disheartened MaxamiUian 
with his poetic temperament; but, though he might have 
fled to Europe, his pride held him to the land of which he 
claimed to be the head. 

Juarez with his army, in which Diaz held a lesser com- 
mand, threatened the capital and MaximiUian retreated be- 
fore him. Every prisoner the French took was executed. 
Finally Diaz, rather by accident than design, captured both 
the French general and Emperor MaximiUian. An orderly 
came to him : 

"Shall we save them to report to President Juarez 
for trial?" 

"No," answered Diaz, "shoot them at once." 

"That is rather summary." 

"It is what they did with our men. The rule is to get 



DIAZ the: dictator. ' 43 

the other fellow before he gets you. Death averts many 
complications in affairs of this kind." 

The French general was led into the field, his hands 
bound, and his back turned to the soldiers. It was an 
effort to humiliate him in death. 

''Fire!" came the order. 

As the volley rang out the French commander turned 
and received the charge in his breast. 

"Bring the usurper." 

A squad entered the room where the emperor was, 
and one of them, with a stiff bow, said : 

"You are wanted, sir." 

"Spare him, spare him," plead his attendant. For an- 
swer the soldier pinioned the arms of the emperor. 

''Do not weep, or mourn," whispered Maximillian. "See 
how royally I shall meet death." 

They led the king to his execution. The queen heard 
about the tragedy in Belgium and her insanity was only 
deepened. The romance of the insane queen and her mimic 
court, and of the profligate brother with his loves and 
cruelties, have become themes of many writers. 

Juarez assumed the presidency from which he had 
been deposed, and, proclaiming a revival of the republic, be- 
gan again reform which he had in mind, confiscating anew 
the church lands, fostering public schools and otherwise 
working in the people's interest. He called .Diaz before 
him, and, while commending him for services to his coun- 
try, rebuked him for the execution of Maximillian, declar- 
ing it unnecessary and out of accord with the spirit of the 
age. Diaz flared in anger. 

"What have you to say about it, Juarez? Your term 
as president lias expired and you are a usurper yourself," 
he shouted. 

"Softly, Porfirio. You have done your country great 
service and provided honor for yourself in this war. Do 
not now become a burden on Mexico and dim the luster 
oT your arms." 

"I am as much entitled to the presidency as you are, 
Bonita Juarez." 

"You are not, Porfirio. While my term of office has 



44 DIAZ THK DICTATOR. 

expired, for two years of that term I was forced from 
ofrice. I shall consider myself president until I shall have 
actually served the time for which I was elected. This is 
not for ambition's sake, but because I shall be needed to 
restore the nation and bind up her wounds." 

Diaz responded angrily and was ordered from the 
room. An hour later it was reported at the capital that 
the army had espoused the cause of Diaz and that Oragon 
and other bandit chiefs were rushing to his aid with rein- 
forcements, while he planned to move at once on the city. 
Left without support and remembering the fate of Maxi- 
millian, Juarez boarded the first out-going steamer and 
sailed for New York, where he died soon afterward. 

Diaz at once proclaimed himself president of Mexico. 

Another perfect drama was completed. Yet it, too, 
was only an act — the second act — of the larger drama of 
a life. 



DIAZ THE DICTATOR. 4:5 



CHAPTER XII. 

THi: GROWING 01^ GRKATNIiSS. 

No MAN ever became famous or powerful in and of 
himself. Fame and power are things that come of society, 
of organization, and only as, now and then, someone 
through some undefinable attraction finds others who are 
willing to sacrifice themselves and give their power to 
him, does anyone become notable. The mistress of Diaz 
had given her all for him. Now she passed from his life 
at just the right time, and another personage, better suited 
to meet his new needs, came into his life to sacrifice all 
that this man of destiny, this grim choice of malevolence, 
might become master of men. Pablo Pueblo came tO' make 
the swarthy, wide-nostriled Porifirio Diaz look his part as 
president. To do this the millionaire became practically 
valet to the Indian, occupying the lowly place as colonel 
on his private stafi:. By means of shaving, scrubbing, 
shower-baths, dieting, and skilful dressing, all accomplished 
under supervision of this expert in these matters, a trans- 
formation was wrought in the appearance of the Indian 
which astonished his closest friends. The president was 
exacting of himself because of his ambition. ■ He became 
distinguished in appearance and his personal habits were 
such as to meet the requirements of the most moral. How 
many tyrants have been personally pure ! These things 
gave him standing at home. Through the good graces of 
his millionaire valet and because of the high office he held 
he was received into society; and when he would pay court 
to the daughter of one of the proudest and richest Cath- 
olics in Mexico, his suit was received with favor, since, 
after their experience with Juarez, both the Catholics and 
the rich were eager to receive protection from the state. 
His illegitimate daughter was also married into a rich and 
powerful family, tlie consideration for her elevation being 
that the husband was a man of such physical and moral 
imperfections that women who knew would not marry him. 



46 DIAZ THE DICTATOR. 

These alliances gave the president standing in spite 
of his humble origin with the wealthy and powerful classes 
of Mexico. To make this standing secure, on the advice 
of Pueblo, he restored to the clergy and nobility much 
of the land which Juarez had turned into commons. As 
a result the church, a world-wide institution, began to make 
him a reputation abroad. At the same time he continued 
unimportant reforms, such as limiting the ringing of bells 
and the number of processions, and so kept up the appear- 
ance of serving ,the people. 

"This is a good start," said his millionaire valet. ''Now 
acknowledge the claims of France, England and Spain, and 
the cause that brought war to Mexico will be removed 
and your standing abroad assured." 

This did not comport with the wish of the new presi- 
dent, but he was finally persuaded to do it. 

"Bacon says," declared Pueblo:, "that he who does 
not follow his interest goes not his own way." 

"And who is Bacon?" 

"The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind," replied 
the young millionaire. "If you are to be perpetual presi- 
dent you must strengthen yourself. 

After the claims of these foreign nations had been 
acknowledged by Diaz his reputation abroad grew amaz- 
ingly. Newspapers gave him flattering notices as a ruler 
who was competent to rightly guide an erratic people that 
had been engaged in civil strife for years. Praise was as 
honey to the president, and, seeing his name blazed abroad, 
fired his ambition still further. 

Still there were problems before the new executive, 
but his valet pointed the way to their solution. There 
were several ambitious dons anxious to elevate themselves 
to the presidency, and the bandits, having had a taste of 
military life, were eager to remain in the army. 

"You must appoint these ambitious dons to office un- 
der you," declared the valet of the executive. ''They will 
give you the benefit of their united strength, and at the 
same time they will watch each other, so that no one will 
gain an advantage over the other." 

Diaz followed this advice. He appointed the leaders 



DIAZ THE DICTATOR. 47 

of various parties to his cabinet. It seemed fair to the 
people, since it gave them all representation, and strength- 
ened him immensely, both by increasing his popularity and 
by placing checks on the advancement of his rivals. He 
even made Oragon a cabinet officer. 

''Now," said the valet, "make the bandits soldiers. 
You will thus transform them from law-breakers to sup- 
porters of the government. By scattering the commands 
over the various states you will prevent the army from 
becoming powerful enough to menace your position." 

Where was an adviser so wise as he? How fortu- 
nate for Diaz that his mistress had passed away at a time 
when her presence would have become a scandal, and that 
in her place there had come a powerful man with a knowl- 
edge of state-craft, who made him.self a servant to the 
ambitions of this darling of fortune ! When the bandits 
were made rurales or local police and transformed to pro- 
tectors of the government by this brilliant stroke of state 
policy, papers over the United States and in Europe her- 
alded the fact, with praise of Diaz, which added to his 
egotism and gave him standing as a wise and conservative 
ruler. Diaz, on the advice of his valet, saw that the rurales 
were well paid — better than they were as bandits — which 
kept them loyal to him. 

"With the army loyal, with the church placated, and 
with the rich and powerful strong in your support, yon 
will be able to hold the presidency indefinitely," said Pueblo. 

"The constitution is against it," replied Diaz, discon- 
solately. 

"Congress can change the constitution. You must 
make friends with congress." 

The president thought of Valle Nacional. He alloted 
it to his former companions in arms, as he had promised 
to do. Then the question came to him. How may they be 
provided with workers? There were possible convicts, 
but not enough, and Diaz did not see how to make it profit- 
able to him. 

"Make them pay for each convict sent them a stipu- 
lated sum,, say, $60," said Pueblo. "Let ten dollars of 
this be yours. Cut off the salaries of the jeffe politicos, 



48 DIAZ the: dictator. 

making their income depend on the convicts they furnish. 
It will make them eager to maintain order in this hitherto 
turbulent country, and it will also add to your income." 

''But how am I to get them under control?'' 

"Declare that Mexico is so prone to rebellion that it 
is necessary for a time to appoint the mayors, so that the 
government may be a unit and bring order out of chaos." 

The way was clear, and Diaz walked therein. 

Forthwith the m.ay or ships were sought by partisans of 
Diaz, who, saw opportunity to make a big thing out of 
them. Some even paid for the office. Once in power, the 
income was sure. If the mayor levied a tax on a rich man 
and he resisted, he was arrested as a law-breaker and sent 
to Valle Nacional, while his goods were confiscated. Did 
the mayor's revenues grow meager? It was an easy thing 
to order the arrest of a party of dancers, say, on the 
ground that they were disturbing the peace, and send them 
all, men, women, even young girls, to the valley of the 
shadow, and they were never heard of again. Each per- 
son brought $50 clear; and the general government said 
nothing, because it meant money for it. Sometimes the 
mayors would seize on young girls and use them as the 
passion prompted, and then send them away to oblivion; 
and if the parents objected they, too, were sent away as 
traitors. 

In time the business of furnishing slaves for the Valle 
Nacional became so good that agents set to work to sup- 
ply the demand with "contract labor." Was a man out of 
work? He was offered a job at good wages, and in his 
eagerness of work signed a contract that was thrust into 
his hand without fully understanding it. If possible he 
was advanced a little money to take him to his destination 
or buy him clothes, and this created a debt that he was 
never permtted to pay. In the Valle Nacional he became 
a peon, was not permitted to write home, could not escape, 
and was whipped if he rebelled with a tough but pliable 
rattan. 

They in the Valle Nacional were so intent on profits 
that they worked the slaves and peons from twelve to 
fourteen hours a day, fed them poorly and housed then) 



DIAZ THE DICTATOR. ' 49 

wretchedly. The average life was not over eight months. 
When death was approaching they were still goaded into 
the field, and worked till they dropped dead. The young 
girls were forced to submit to the embraces of the fore- 
m,en. If a man was struck so hard he was killed, there 
was no one to object or make inquiry. And the old bandits 
had an easy life, enjoying plenty and all the sensuous lux- 
uries they craved. The administration of Diaz had their 
warmest support. 

The new president had learned the secret of strength- 
ening his rule. The rich, the mayors, the soldiers, were 
all for him. He was able to crush opposition. He now 
sought the support of members of congress. 

''You can bring them all to your will," said Pueblo. 

"But how?" 

''Recommend the passage of bills that will be of ad- 
vantage to the representatives. The whole resources of 
Mexico are before you, most of the land being held as 
public commons. Use these resources to strene^then vour- 
self." 

Was there a man whose influence Diaz wished to win ? 
He was allotted a hacienda from the common lands, *'for 
services rendered the government." Was there an oppo- 
nent whose support was desired ? . He was appointed as 
jeffe politico of some city where the power to levy tribute 
would make him rich. If congress was refr-actory, Diaz 
would suggest some measure which would enable all the 
members to line their purses, and forthwith congress be- 
came tractable. Thereafter the president could get 'passed 
any law which he might desire. The presidential term was 
lengthened to six years. It was contrary to the constitu- 
tion to do this, but it was done, and the people said noth- 
ing when the rich and powerful approved. Next, a law 
was passed repealing the constitutional provision that a 
president might not serve two terms in succession. When 
the next campaign opened the men who would have op- 
posed Diaz were in his cabinet with their hands tied. Diaz 
managed that there should be "popular demonstrations" in 
his behalf, paying the expense himself. His machine was 



50 DIAZ the: dictator. 

perfect and he was "elected" president, although less than 
a third of the normal vote was polled. 

The president wept as he spoke of his appreciation 
of the vote of approval that had been extended him by the 
people, but his wandering, beady eyes gUttered as he spoke. 



DIAZ THi: DICTATOR. ' 51 

CHAPTER XIII. 

PASSING OF FEUX DIAZ. 

The president's brother, Felix, called Chato, was made 
chief of the Mexican rurales. Up to this time opposition 
to Porfirio Diaz had been silenced or concealed. But now 
Felix discovered a conspiracy. Papers were found impli- 
cating several of his former companions-at-arms in a plot 
to unseat what they termed the usurper. Felix telegraphed 
to his brother, the president, to know what should be done 
with the conspirators, and received the reply : "Shoot them 
red-handed." 

Teren, the first conspirator arrested, was addressed 
by Felix Diaz : 

"I am going to shoot you by order of the president." 

''Then," said the prisoner, "you are going to commit 
a murder, for my conscience does not accuse me of a 
crime." 

"Shut up ! Soldiers, shoot this man." 

"May I write some letters before I die? I ask only 
ten minutes." 

Not a minute. Shoot this fellow at once." And the 
deed was done. 

When the second conspirator was arrested he boldly 
said: "Under the constitution I am entitled to a trial be- 
fore judgment is passed on me." 

"I am the judge and my word is the law." answered 
Felix. "Let him be shot." 

The third victim had been an acquaintance of the gen- 
eral and presumed to talk : 

"You must be crazy, Felix, to shoot men in this way, 
without a trial. Of what am I guilty?" 

"Silence !" was the response. "You are a conspirator 
and the safety of the government demands that you die." 

"I suppose you have full proof of this?" 

"I need no proofs, my conscience saying it is so," 



53 DIAZ THK DICTATOR. 

"This shows you have no proofs. Be the man I 
thought you were when we were friends together." 

*'A true man is forced to be firm in. a case of this 
kind." 

''You will at least permit me to write to my wife." 

''We have no time for that. Here, soldiers, shoot 
him." 

The crack of rifles which marked his death had hardly 
ceased to echo when the district judge ran in half dressed 
and angry at the usurpation of his authority. He de- 
nounced the work as a massacre and was in turn abused 
and cursed ; but no more of the conspirators were shot. 
Felix walked away and almost immediately the wife of 
one of the men whose corpse lay prone on the grass came 
on the scene. With a cry of anguish she fell on the body 
and when they carried her away she was a maniac. 

When news of the bloody event spread through the 
land the president shed tears, and declared that, though 
the soldiers had been attacked, they were too severe. But 
there was no investigation and no one was punished for 
the deed. 

The lesson was learned by others who were ready to 
revolt. There were no more conspiracies, and foreign 
papers printed news, which was furnished them, to the 
effect that Diaz had not only put down outlawry in Mexico 
by the unique device of making the bandits police, but he 
had also ended the rebellions that had been the shame of 
the southern republics up to this time. 

But there remained several who were ambitious to 
hold the. highest office in the nation. These might at any 
time become revolutionists and endanger both the peace 
of the country and the continued power of Diaz. By a 
strange coincidence of events something began to happen 
to these prospective rivals of the president. 

One of these, a governor of one of the states who 
had gained popularity by lowering the "alcabalos" or cus- 
toms house duties, and thereby became a formidable rival 
of Diaz, was assassinated while on his way to' a theater 
with his family. The Indian who did the deed was promptly 



DIAZ THK DICTATOR. 53 

killed by rurales, who ''happened" to be near, before he 
had time to make a statement. 

Another general, whose popularity was alarming to 
Porfirio Diaz, ventured to tell the president his opinion of 
the new order. The general at once discovered his error 
and remained closely at home, pretending to be ill and per- 
mitting none but his wife to prepare his food. At last he 
suspected his own servants of spying for the government 
and made an effort to escape to the United States. On the 
way he was murdered. The deed was ascribed to bandits, 
but there were no arrests. 

A third rival of the president, alarmed at the fate 
which had befallen the other two men, fled to Europe and 
afterward settled in Texas, where he entered on the prac- 
tice of medicine. One night he was called out, ostensibly 
to visit a patient, and while on the way to the place desig- 
nated, was waylaid and killed, the assassin making his way 
to Mexico and safety. 

There were whispers that these mysterious occurrences 
were brought about at the orders of the head of Mexico, 
the man most benefited by them ; but, however that may 
be, the most dangerous rivals of the president had disap- 
peared, and others were after this time cautious in express- 
ing their poHtical ambitions. 

Chato, the flaf-nosed Diaz, was appointed, governor of 
Vera Cruz. Here he ruled like an oriental despot. He 
had a habit of sending his soldiery to bring in any pretty 
girl of tender age whom he fancied. Then he would ply 
her with ''pulque" until she was helpless, when he would 
outrage her. One day a friend presented him with a new 
rifle. Desiring to test it he stepped on the veranda of his 
palace and aimed it at an old woman who was hobbling 
across the plaza. Crack ! went the rifle and the old woman 
feh dead. "It is a very good rifle/' quietly remarked Chato 
as he re-entered the palace. 

But the people remembered these things and one day 
Chato was assassinated. The vengeful Indians cut his 
body to bits and scattered it over the country. When word 
was borne to Porfirio he said nothing, but it was noticed 



54 DIAZ rut DICTATOR. 

that his eyes glittered and his mouth shut even more firmly 
than usual. 

A short time after this the people of th€ city were en- 
joying a dance on the plaza, men, women and children 
gathered in large numbers. Suddenly a shrill command 
rang out, and thousands of rifles in the hands of soldiers 
belched red into the crowd. Men, women and children fell 
by the hundreds, blood streaming from the bodies. Fathers 
sought to shield their children with their own bodies and all 
fell as the second volley sang its song of death. People 
tried to escape through windows or at street-corners, but 
were caught and bayonetted. Fifteen hundred were dead 
in the plaza and as many more were wounded. The day 
following the living were compelled to haul cordwood lo 
the plaza, where a pyramid of human bodies and of in- 
flamables was erected and the torch was applied. 

Afterward thousands of Indian men were killed. It 
used to be said, after that, that there were no men left 
amond the Indians, only women and boys. Thus was the 
kilHng of Felix ''Chato" Diaz avenged. It was the chain- 
whip with which Porfirio was taming the people ! 



DIAZ THi: DICTATOR. 55 



CHAPTER XIV. 

DISPOSING OF A CRiTICAIv PRi:SS. 

PoRFiRio Diaz had quarreled with Pueblo. He had 
come to regard himself as one of the greatest rulers the 
world had known and as such felt humiliated at receiving 
advice from a valet and frankly told Pueblo so when 
the latter rebuked him for his severity in the massacre of 
Juchitan. 

"I did it for your own good," replied the millionaire 
valet. ''Such severe measures will not forward your in- 
terests." 

"I consider myself able to care for myself, and do not 
wish interference from a valet." 

The milhonaire flushed hotly. Yet he restrained his 
torrid temper and said: 

"And this after all the service I have done you." 

"I have discovered," returned Diaz, "that your service 
consisted in persuading me to serve the rich — those of your 
class. The service was on my part and to you." 

It was true, furnishing motive for the service given. 
The milhonaire valet turned away and left the capitol 
without a word. 

Diaz was now left to follow his own resources, and his 
real disposition, product of heredity and environment, soon 
asserted itself. The press became a source of annoyance 
to him, criticising his acts, flaying him for the massacre of 
Juchitan, insinuating various things relative to the disap- 
pearance of his enemies., and suggesting that a change of 
presidents was desirable. Diaz determined to stop this 
complaint and his mind reverted to the method his father 
had used in the taming of the colt. He would crush oppo- 
sition. He remembered the old Belem prison which his 
ancestors, the Aztecs, had built in the old days. He de- 
termined to use this, which had proven so effective in other 
years, in crushing the spirit of opposition, and he gloated 



56 DIAZ THK DICTATOR. 

over the thought of his enemies in Belem as his mind ran 
over the possibiHties of torture there. 

Belem was on the coast of the gulf, its lower floor 
being a cellar that lay below the sea level. Walls twenty 
feet in thickness kept out the sea and held the prisoners 
secure, but the walls were always damp from the waters 
that pressed on them. There was a court some 45x45 feet 
in size, with stone cells surroundings. In this court there 
was a single spring. Inmates of the prison could see noth- 
ing at any time but the starry sky above. That, thought 
the Indian president, would prove an excellent place in 
which to crush the spirit of his critics. 

At the entrance of the harbor of Vera Cruz, on an 
island where naked savages once held cannibal feasts, 
was another of these fortress prisons, San Juan de Uloa. 
Walls fifty feet high and forty feet across, burrowing fifty 
feet under the sea level, kept the prisoners secure and af- 
forded drilling spots for the guards. Within these walls 
Diaz erected shops and foundries where minor offenders 
were required to work. Here medseval conditions prevailed 
even then. It is said prisoners have been literally beaten 
to death. Others have been eaten by insects and worms 
that throng the place, until they expired. The bodies of the 
dead were fed to the sharks which fill the waters waiting 
for such grewsome feasts. It was whispered among the 
prisoners that they were fed soup made from the bodies of 
their dead companions. There are cells in stories under- 
ground, the lower floors being below sea level, and in these 
dark, stone dungeons the worst offenders v/ere confined, 
being kept there until reason fled. New victims were placed 
in ceHs with gibbering idiots until they, too, succumbed to 
the horror. Here, thought this modern president with the 
mediaeval mind, is an argument that will silence those who 
dare oppose or criticise. 

The president began his campaign by applying to a 
still truculent congress for a change in the constitution 
relative to a free press, and chuckled at the cunning, this 
time clearly his own, of his plan. Originally the constitu- 
tion declared : 

The press must respect public life, morality and public peace. Trans- 



DIAZ TH^ DICTATOR. 57 

gressions of the law by the press shall be judged by two parties, one to 
determine the guilt and another which shall apply the law and indicate 
the penalty. 

Changed by congress, the double tribunal was dis- 
carded and the instruction read: 

The crimes committed by the press shall be judged by competent 
tribunals of the federation or of the states, or of the federal district and 
the territory of lower California, according to their special legislation. 

This made the conviction of editors easier and left the 
way open for special legislation relative to the censorship 
of the press. But special legislation was not needed. The 
same result was accomplished by leaving the matter clear, 
so as to appear to not interfere with the press, while in- 
voking a general statute that read : 

Defamation consists in communicating deceitfully to one or more 
persons the imputation of a true or false act, determined or undetermined, 
which might dishonor or discredit or expose to contempt the persons 
referred to. 

Under this provision of the code, Diaz was able to 
silence the papers that criticised him, since criticism, 
whether the same was "true or false," was held to be de- 
famatory. Editors who exposed graft and proved their 
charges so conclusively that the guilty officials were dis- 
missed, were sent to jail. In Yucatan a special law was 
enacted declaring that in "offenses against the state, to 
prosecute it is not necessary that the slandered person 
should have been mentioned by his full name. It is sufficient 
to indicate the initials, or by an incorrect and disfigured 
allusion to the name, or by a certain suggestion of time, 
place, profession, manner, characteristic signs," etc. 

Now began a systematic persecution of the press. 
When a paper offended, all who were connected wnth it, 
from editor to office boy, were arrested and thrown in jail, 
while the type and machinery were dumped into the street. 
Often men were thrown into prison as they were found — 
in undress. Scores of papers were suppressed and their 
editors sent to Belem or San Juan de Uloa. There came 
to be a cell in Belem known as the editors' ward. One 
of the judges who was most used in trying editors had as 
his motto : "Every accused man is supposed to be a crim- 
inal until he is proven innocent." Another remarked of jus- 



58 DIAZ the: dictator. 

tice that it is a pamplina, a chickweed, a trifle which 
feeds many people." 

In the course of a few years, more than 1,500 persons 
who had written or spoken against the president were sent 
to San Juan de Uloa. During a campaign in which Oragon 
had the temerity to make the race for president, 20,000 
men, women and children, supporters of Oragon, were 
killed, and finally Oragon himself was arrested and 
promptly shot. More than sixty women were sent to 
Belem for opposing the candidacy of Diaz. One need not 
wonder, under these circumstances, that the president was 
chosen to succeed himself. 

After Diaz had silenced the press he wished to have 
a report of Belem, without having an official investigation: 
the report he might enjoy while the investigation would 
lead to scandal. So he sent a private representative to 
visit the prison. The atmosphere of the prison was such 
that the envoy contracted typhoid fever from a few hours 
spent there. But his report was satisfactory to the dispo- 
sition of the tamer of the colt. He said : 

"Eighteen hundred men sleep in the court and as most 
have to stand they fight like beasts for room on which to 
lie. Nature is eased in open tubs in the court, which often 
overflow and fill the space with awful stenches. The spring 
that gushed to one side is used both for drinking, washing 
of hands and cooking, and is filthy beyond expression. No 
soap or towels are provided, and, after washing in the 
spring, at which others a moment later drink, the men dry 
themselves in the sun, which beats hot on the court. There 
is no ventilation in either court or the cells, but the con- 
sumptives spit on the wall till there is a slime at every 
point you touch. Bugs, flies, lice are everywhere. Every 
day some die. Some are whipped to death. Men and wo- 
men consort in full view of all. Even the boys confined 
there are used openly for purposes of homo-sexuality, and 
made drunk by the wardens so they may be used. Many 
become insane, or driveling idiots, without reason and with- 
out memory." 

The president rubbed his hands as though in glee. 
"They will learn. Belem will teach them," he said. 



DIAZ THK DICTATOR. 59 

CHAPTER XV. 

I^KY FUGA. » 

In the: days of the bandits it became a custom, which 
assumed the proportions of an unwritten law, that when 
bandits were captured and tried to run away it was legal 
for the soldiers to shoot them. This custom was called 
Ley Fuga, the runaway law. The olden bandits were now 
the rurales, or mounted police, but their chief came to the 
president with an idea: 

"Belem is too slow," he said. "Men sometimes live 
for a year there. Why cannot the rurales arrest the ene- 
mies of the government, and if they try to escape employ 
ley fuga on them?" 

"Capital idea," the president agreed. "Only we must 
be careful and provide proof of the runaway, so the people 
will not complain." 

"Trust me for that," said the head of the rurales. 

Forthwith he bought a slouch hat perforated with a 
bullet-hole, and a saddle similarly adorned, and after every 
case of ley fuga, this saddle and this hat were presented 
and accepted as proof that the killing had been necescary. 
Among the jeffe politicos and the masters of great hacien- 
das the new interpretation of ley fttga was received with 
approval, for it enabled them to put out of the way critics, 
rivals and malcontents, and with perfect safety to them- 
selves. It was during this period when the custom of lay 
fuga was enforced not only by the general government, 
but by the governors and mayors as well, that peonage was 
revived in Alexico, because ley fuga operated to crush op- 
position to every form of despotism. It was during this 
period that the repubHc of Mexico became the United dos 
Mexicano. The terror was such that elections were par- 
ticipated in only by supporters of the administration, and 
the governors and mayors,, from being elective officers, 
became appointees of the dictator. During this period it 
has been estimated that no less than 20,000 people lost their 



60 DIAZ THi: DICTATOR. 

lives. In many cases they went beyond the lay fuga. Some- 
times a man who had o-(fended was called from a cantina* 
or waylaid on a street and given darle agiie,"^ or officially 
assassinated. In one case a too persistent newspaper man, 
disregarding the warnings and beatings, and insisting on 
exposing the condition of affairs, was bound, taken to a 
brickkiln and cremated alive. It was a saying of the period, 
taken from the lips of Porfirio Diaz himself, that "Gener- 
osity is an attribute of weak men ; strong men use severity." 

A candidate for governor who opposed the Diaz regime 
organized a demonstration and parade in his behalf. The 
administration's governor, then incumbent, posted police at 
a public place, and as the procession passed poured into 
its ranks a volley which was fatal to many. The paraders 
fled to the homes in terror, while the anti-administration 
candidate hurried from the state, disguised as a fireman 
on the only railroad that penetrated the section. There was 
considerable complaint and formal charges were made in 
congress, but the president sent in a message which be- 
moaned the unfortunate occurrence wherein "the paraders 
killed each other in order to bring discredit upon the dis- 
tinguished governor"; and that ended the matter. 

"It was all very well," explained Pueblo, "to be severe 
in the olden days, but it will not do now. The spirit of the 
middle class is stronger than it once was, and it will be im- 
possible to maintain feudal ways. Spain herself cannot 
stand before the new ideal, but is continually losing ter- 
ritory and prestige; and if Spain, in Europe, cannot uphold 
monarchial and feudal ways, how much less can the Span- 
ish countries in America?" 

"Yes,^ the idea of democracy is advancing," assented 
the American who overhead. 

"It isn't that. It is still true, as Bacon pointed out in 
his day that there is little danger from the commons. But 
the merchants are vena porta, and if they flourish not, a 
kingdom may have good limbs, but it will have empty veins. 
The Anglo-Saxon ideal is conquering the world,' and it 
were better to not bleed an important vein, to conform to 
the new rat her than to follow the old ideas of government." 

*Saloon. **"Given water." 



DIAZ THE DICTATOR. 61 

CHAPTER XVL 

re;turn o:^ puebi^o. 

PoREiRio Diaz,, surrounded by soldiers, was walking 
from the national palace to the Alameda, when a man broke 
through the line of bayonets and struck the president a stag- 
gering blow on the neck. The soldiers were ready to bay- 
onet the drunken pelado when Diaz ordered them to stop, 
and the fellow was turned over to the civil authorities. 

That night the chief of police organized a dozen of 
his force, dressed them as pelados,'^ and at midnight they 
dashed into police headquarters, disarmed the guard, and 
stabbed the man who had attacked the president, and who 
was tied in a chair, with stilettos, disemboweling and kill- 
ing him. Then they unfurled the Mexican flag, shouting, 
''Down with anarchy!" The pohce arrested "innocent by- 
standers" and made a great show of discouraging the mob 
until the participants in the assassination might reappear 
in proper dress. 

But the papers would not be silent. In spite of the 
many editors who had been sent to Belem they ferreted 
out the scandal and told the truth. So great was the in- 
terest that a meeting of the cabinet was held to discuss the 
affair, and an investigation by congress was ordered. When 
this investigation occurred the policemen who took part in 
the assassination confessed and were acquitted on the 
ground that they were acting under orders from the chief 
of police. This personage, seeing that he was to be made 
a scapegoat, declared at last that he intended to confess 
everything. That night, according to reports made in the 
newspapers, the chief of police committed suicide. But 
others of the police made it known that it was he who, at 
the instigation of rivals for the presidency, had hired 
the pelado to kill Diaz, and the latter, having failed to do so, 
was slain lest he make known the true situation. 

This incident alarmed Diaz. He saw at last that his 



'Very poor Indians. 



62 DIAZ TH^ DICTATOR. 

repressive policy was creating two foes for every one de- 
stroyed. He was at his wit's end, and in his extremity 
sent again for Pueblo, apologizing to him and being fully 
pardoned. Once again the millionaire became valet to the 
president, who began once more to assume a more benevo- 
lent appearance, and, under his secret instructions, the 
pubHc policy of the president was changed. 

"There is a better way to silence the press than by 
repression," cautioned Pueblo, ''and that is to use it.'' 

''Use it? I do not understand." 

"Start a paper of your own and sell it cheaper than any 
other paper can afford to sell. Thus you will get the people 
to read the paper, it will pay you a dividend, and you can 
tell the news as you see fit." 

The president's beady eyes glittered, but his chin 
dropped, out of astonishment at the proposition. 

"Then," resumed Pueblo, "you should invite the As- 
sociated Press to keep a representative at the capital and 
give it a monopoly of foreign news. There has been too 
much matter going abroad derogatory to your administra- 
tion. We can stop this by the monopoly." 

The president considered. He was puzzled. "You 
say," he repHed, "that we should sell your paper cheaper 
than others can afford, and that still we can make money 
from it. How can this be done?" 

"I know an American firm which wishes a monopoly 
of the paper trade in Mexico. Grant this monopoly, and it 
will sell paper to you at half the price it charges your 
rivals. Then, if for any reason, you should wish to sup- 
press a paper you need not appear in it at all. Simply 
instruct this company to say to the publisher, 'We are very 
sorry, but we are so situated that we cannot furnish you 
paper,' and then, because he cannot buy elsewhere, he will 
have to suspend. There will be no scandal, no trial, but 
it will be very effective." 

Diaz was simply astounded at the wisdom of these 
propositions. The American company did receive the pa- 
per monopoly. Bl Iniparcial was started, it was sold for 
half what other papers received, and soon became influ- 
ential and a paying proposition. The Associated Press of 



DIAZ the: dictator. ' 63 

the United States received a monopoly of Mexican news, 
and soon the papers of the world were full of praise of 
Diaz. 

The crowning act, the climax of the policy and praise, 
however, was reached when Pueblo said: 

''Now, grant full pardon to all the editors confined in 
Belem.' 

At first Diaz protested, but after some urging he 
yielded the point. Bl Imparcial and the Associated Press 
exploited the matter and made for Diaz a reputation for 
clemency and liberality which fully justified the ''iron hand'' 
that he had used in days when repression, owing to local 
conditions, was a necessity. Within a year his reputation 
had been rehabilitated. 

Here again is a complete story, a drama of death; and 
this is the third act of the greater drama of Modern Mexico. 



64 DIAZ the: dictator. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

COMING AND GOING. 



''Th^ days and methods of Cortez are past," said 
Pueblo. ''Instead of fostering feudalism we must advance 
to capitalism. Instead of pursuing the policy of Don Quix- 
ote, we must follow -the lead of the Anglo-Saxon. The 
result of the civil war in the United States settled forever 
the institutions of slavery and serfdom. We must now de- 
velop under capitalism and the wages-system. 

"These are generalities," responded Diaz. "Just what 
would you have me do?" 

"Encourage American enterprises. You see already 
how the Associated Press has aided you. You have in 
your hands two elements that, wisely used, will bring Mex- 
ico to a high place among the family of nations." 

"And what are they?" 

"The vast tracts of public lands which Juarez made 
commons. Give enterprising Americans a chance and they 
will develop them into remarkable fertiHty. Your second 
resource will bring you to the front as a strong competitor 
under commercialism and will be sure to bring investors. 
That is, cheap labor." 

"You mean the Indians?" 

"Yes. In the United States the red men were hunters 
and trappers and were not available as workmen; but in, 
Mexico they were more civilized and are faithful at toil. 
They now work the communal lands; but when you give 
away these lands, as they did in our neighbor to the north, 
these Indians will be compelled to work for wages. The 
peonage system may be extended over them until they be- 
come the cheapest workmen on the earth and a great in- 
ducement for investors." 

Diaz flushed and his beady eyes ghstened. He, too, 
was part Indian, and his effort had hitherto been to subdue 
the Spaniard under the yoke of an Indian and thus avenge 
the conquest of Cortez. This, indeed, had been the motive 



DIAZ THD DICTATOR. 65 

behind his vigorous campaign of a few years just past. 
Yet he recognized that he had failed, and was ambitious 
for success. So he merely suggested : 

"I thought you said it was dangerous to subdue the 
people." 

"Only those people who have tasted of liberty. The 
commons have always been under subjection, and pass un- 
der severer service as easily as the horse or ox. See how 
the Spaniards beat down the Indians in Cortez's day. You, 
too, are a Spaniard, a descendant of the proudest of the 
dons." This pleased the president. Some how all who come 
to power grow ready to repudiate their humble origin and 
anxious to establish noble relationship. 

''Yes. My father could tame any horse, no difference 
how fractious he might be." 

''So can you tame domesticated human beings. I am 
speaking for your advancement. But, mark me, when you 
grant concessions of land, of mines and of franchises, ex- 
cept governmental supervision as well as an interest therein. 
This will afford you a vast revenue and enable you to make 
public improvement. Besides, wealth will give you a per- 
manent standing in this commercial age." 

The presidential policy changed. Investments by 
Americans were encouraged and liberal grants of land 
helped to bring them. The Associated Press became an 
asset as an advertiser of Mexican resources which Diaz 
as dictator exploited for his own advancement. He rapidly 
grew wealthy. But he still retained the spirit of the medi- 
aeval ruler and turned his profits into cash, as Castro was 
doing in Venezuela during the same period, and as Abdul 
Hamid was doing in Turkey. 

In other days Hinton Rowland Helper, the man who 
had forecasted the triumph of capitalism over chattel slav- 
ery, dreamed of a north and south road to penetrate Mex- 
ico and Canada ; but the occasion was not ripe for it. Now, 
however, when two railroad magnates, one backed by the 
fortune of the old Hudson Bay company, the other by the 
Standard Oil millions, were fighting for markets and ter- 
ritory, one invading Canada in his plan of campaign, the 
other took advantage of the opening in Mexico and built 



66 DIAZ the: DiCTAtOR. 

to the national capital. From here he extended his system 
until it tapped the various rich portions of the country. 
The ever watchful Standard Oil company sought to appro- 
priate the oil fields of Mexico. 

The Guggenheims developed great copper interests at 
Cannae on the instigation of Colonel Breen, who had 
discovered them ; and smelters vast were erected at various 
cities, operated by Indians at a low wage. New England- 
ers started textile mills under the very shadow of the capi- 
tol, obtaining labor at 25 cents a day, which was cheaper 
than child labor in the states. Diaz, a native of Oaxcala, on 
the Teheeantepex peninsula, took up again the plan of 
Cortez for a highway of commerce across the isthmus, and 
subsidized a New York corporation for the construction of 
a railroad, agreeing to pay $7,500 for each kilometer uf 
road constructed. But owing to the agitation of the Pan- 
ama canal in the United States, it was impossible to raise 
sufficient money to complete the enterprise. The govern- 
ment, when the charter was rescinded, received $2,000,000, 
which had been collected in America from sale of bonds. 
Again the contract was let to a subsidized company ' and 
the work was completed; yet, because of insufficient har- 
bors at the terminals, and because of agitation of the 
Panama canal, it has never paid. But this was Diaz's own 
proposition and he had not accepted proper advice. 

Many Americans moved to Mexico City, and a spirit 
of modernism began to transform the country. From 
profits on concessions the government reaped a. stupendous 
revenue. A magnificent capitol and presidential residence 
were constructed along modern lines,, and a $4,000,000 na- 
tional theater was built of marble, and in this Diaz, the 
man who never attended theaters, had a personal interest. 
As Diaz became rich he grew magnificent. Foreign poten- 
tates, whose citizens had received valuable concessions from 
him, presented him with decorations, and on state occa- 
sions he loaded his breast with these medals after the 
order of an eastern emperor. Yet Pueblo was able to 
measurably subdue his love of display and make him in 
manners something of the modern gentleman and financier. 
Magnificent fiestas were given often in the palace at Cha- 



DIAZ the: dictator. 67 ' 

pultepec to foreign ambassadors, but these were placed in 
the hands of professionals, so that good taste was main- 
tained along with the elegance ; this gave Mexico standing 
with other governments, so at once strengthening and ad- 
vertising the Dictator. 

Papers all over the world began to exploit Mexico, 
and Diaz was extravagantly praised. He was compared 
to Washington, Napoleon, Caesar, and even to Jesus Christ. 
Americans flocked to Mexico to see the country, but they 
were shown only the fine forests, the bountiful crops, the 
well-ordered haciendas, the beautiful scenery, the plentiful 
game and rich fisheries., and only the things to exploit ap- 
peared in the papers. If the reporters did catch a sight 
of frail peons, men and women, staggering under loads 
that would stall an ox, or saw them drudging half-naked 
in the field or huddled about the wretched patios,'^ they 
were considered as things apart from humanity, as one 
of the resources and inducements of Mexico, like cattle 
and sheep. When written about it was as a curious phase 
of life, not as though they were human beings that suffered 
injustice. Diaz, the man who offered these riches to the 
world, was lionized by the world. 

Yet, even at this time, there arose a rival, who, be- 
cause of popularity with the poorer classes, was feared by 
Diaz. The president wanted to send him to Belem or 
employ ley fug a against him, but Pueblo insisted on dif- 
ferent treatment and carried through his scheme in detail. 

The rival was invited to dine with the president and 
could not well decline. At the table he was treated with 
every consideration and partook of an excellent menu. 
But, after a discourse on the beauties of France and its 
climate, Diaz remarked that he knew his friend would en- 
joy living there. 

''So sure am I," he added, "that, mindful of your 
comfort and pleasure, I have already bought you a villa 
there and take pleasure in presenting you with a deed to it." 

''But — but I haven't sufficient income to afford it," 
])rotested the rival. 

"Ah, my friend, I will see to that. I have provided 

♦Dwelling of the poor. Fiestas — Feasts. 



G8 DIAZ THE DICTATOR. 

a pension for you. I have also engaged passage for you, 
and the boat leaves in an hour." 

''But my family has made no preparation for such 
a trip." 

"Again we will relieve you of care. We will see that 
your dear ones are prepared and given transportation on 
a boat that follows. You will be relieved from all care 
in the matter. And I hope you will find France an ideal 
place to live. My private guard will accompany you to 
the boat. Go with my blessing and highest consideration." 

With these words the rival was hurried to the wait- 
ing boat. He never returned to Mexico and was a rival 
to Diaz no longer. 



DIAZ the: dictator. ' 69 



CHAPTER XVlIII. 

INVASION 01^ Mi:xiCO. 

Thi:y came from America to spy out the land, fmding 
it of infinite variety and eternal charm. Stretches of water 
front unsurpassed, with splendid harbors ; great rivers ; 
mountains of mineral ; magnificent trees ; soil that spouted 
flowers and fruits. Forests where it was necessary to use 
the machette to clear a way in the dense foliage; it was a 
land which might be described in scriptural words, "flow- 
ing with milk and honey." 

There were natural fields of para grass, places where 
pineapples grew, forests of amata or white mahogany, and 
tampaziran, or rosewood; and everywhere flowers, flowers, 
flowers. Shrubs and trees were festooned with wild hon- 
eysuckles, which perfumed the woods. Morning-glories of 
red, blue, pink and yellow,, large and velvety, matted the 
trees, the vines clambering fifty feet in height. Under- 
neath and overhead was a wilderness of flowers, a dash 
and riot of color. Crackles, or blackbirds, shining black 
and of infinite variety; the canon wren with a voice like 
the dripping of water in a cool ravine; the house finch 
singing continuously about the fields ; the vermillion fly- 
catcher flashing ruby in the light; the brown pipit o, slip- 
ping from sight the moment he was seen, and a thousand 
other birds singing like cherubs amid the rose-trees and 
heliotropes, and even in the parks and the city trees, made 
Mexico a place of beauty, of song and abounding life. 

Into this country Americans swarmed. This was the 
invasion of the small capitalists, of the middle class. With 
land at a few cents an acre, with peon labor to be ob- 
tained at a few cents a day, with soil and climate that would 
admit of three or four crops a year, it was easy to get a 
start, and life itself was easy. Investors did not have to 
work to any great extent, and at the same time they grew 
into competence and even opulence. American colonies 
were formed in and around various cities and towns, and 



70 DIAZ the: dictator. 

English newspapers and American ways began to prevail. 

At the same time, or a little later, perhaps, the invasion 
of the aggregations of capital known as trusts began. The 
government, as part of its franchise, retained supervision 
of these greater enterprises, which was hailed as govern- 
ment ownership, but which was more truly a partnership 
of the Dictator in the businesses he licensed. A foreigner 
whose sagacity was vouched for by Pueblo was made 
supervisor of these corporations, which made him, while 
nominally a state officer, in reality a business partner of 
the president. Standard Oil came in as the Mexican Pe- 
troleum Co., with a capitalization of $50,000,000; the cop- 
per trust, capitalized for operation in Mexico, at $60,000,- 
000, came to control the Cannae mines discovered by Colo- 
nel Breen, various smelters, and other enterprises. The 
meat trust came with a capitalization of $20,000,000 as the 
Mexican National Packing Co. The lumber trust came as 
the Sierra Madra Land and Lumber Co., with a capitaHza- 
tion of $18,000,000. The National railways of Mexico, 
financed for $605,000,000, chiefly by American capital, were 
controlled by the Dictator as one system, and paid him well. 
The Guggenheim Exploration Co., whose business it was to 
find and appropriate mines, an interest in which was re- 
tained by the government, that is, by Diaz, came with a 
capitaHzation of $20,000,000. The American lead trust, 
the sugar trust, the rubber trust, all invested in Mexico 
under conditions which made them partners of Diaz. In 
olden days Joseph had made Pharaoh a monopolist of 
Egypt through a seizure of land, but Pueblo and the 
foreign business manager of the modern Mexican Dictator 
made him part owner in pratically all of Mexico, through 
a seizure of the land from which the crops came and out 
of which minerals and oils were drawn. And the latter 
monopoly was the more profitable and complete. 

"Are you not afraid to give Diaz such power over 
you?" asked the American of Colonel Breen. "In the 
United States you would oppose government ownership." 

"It is different there. There the government is sup- 
posed to mean the people and the heads of it are always 
changing. Here the government means Diaz and it is a 



DIAZ TH^ DICTATOR. • 71 

great advantage to have as a business partner a man who 
has absolute power. It is to his financial interest to keep 
down disorder and to give us cheaper labor; and Diaz 
does it." 

His foreign business manager also taught the presi- 
dent another trick. 

"You have your hands on the big investments," he 
said, "but the small farmer has almost escaped you. You 
can get your proper tribute from him if you will." 

"How?" asked the Dictator. 

"By manipulating markets. You have absolute con- 
trol of transportation. You also control the press. These 
things will give you control of prices, if you wish them. 
At harvest time cause there to be a report of abounding 
crops to be sent out. At the same time let there be a 
shortage of cars so that planters will have to depend on 
local markets. They will accordingly sell low and you 
can purchase. Then you can boom prices in a strong 
market. This will give you your share in the product of 
the planters and haciendas, which is due you for the pro- 
tection afforded them." 

The program was carried out, resulting in vast addi- 
tions to the Dictator's fortune. At the same time it made 
him practically a business partner with every planter in 
Mexico, and, as Colonel Breen said, this made him ready to 
protect these planters and obtain cheap labor for them. 
It was an arrangement, now, much more far-reaching than 
that of Joseph in Egypt, showing Diaz as greater than 
Joseph, as one newspaper man pointed out, and at the same 
time producing no more slavery than when the Israelites 
were placed under the yoke of Pharaoh. 

It was at this time that Colonel Breen made his mem- 
orable trip to New York. He was prosperous and spent 
money with a lavish hand. He got drunk there and was 
criticised by Tom Lawson in a caustic way. As a result 
of this publication Colonel Breen published big advertise- 
ments in the papers, saying that at a certain hour the next 
day he would call on Lawson. It was known that Colonel 
Breen had killed a dozen Apaches in one battle, and New 
York grew excited over the coming meeting. As the hour 



72 DIAZ the: dictator. 

of meeting drew near thousands gathered in front of the 
hotel where Lawson stopped. The Bostonian descended the 
stairs and posted himself in the doorway with a pistol in 
either hand. When Colonel Breen approached, the crowd 
fairly held its breath. But Breen drew near with both 
hands extended, exclaiming in hearty voice : 

"Hello, Tom ! Let's have a drink." 

The two entered the bar together, and the crowd out- 
side heard them talking and laughing in the heartiest man- 
ner possible. 

"Are you going to sell your new stock?" asked Law- 
son. "They say in the street that Rogers is prepared to 
defeat your plan." 

Colonel Breen laughed. "They are riding for a rail," 
he replied. "My friends will take the stock, and I am 
going to take a bit myself. Here is my check for $150,000 
I have just made out for my share. 

"Are you not afraid to risk the money against the 
Standard Oil crowd?" 

"Why, this is only pin money," replied the big miner, 
tossing the check on the counter, "I'll match you for it, 
heads or tails." 

"No, keep your check. You risk too much on the toss 
of a coin." 

"I'm always lucky. I've had my biggest luck when 
everything seemed to be against me. Four years ago Wall 
street hooted at my copper mines, but now they are the 
biggest things in Mexico. I'll sell my new mine to the 
Amalgamated for $2,000,000." 

"Rogers wouldn't touch it for that." 

"If he doesn't take it now he will have to pay fifty 
million for it." 

And within five years he did. The town of Cananea 
sprung up around the new mines, a town where saloons 
and dance halls ran wide open and where half the popula- 
tion staid up all night — a cosmopolitan town of Americans, 
Mexicans, Indians and Chinamen — where 8,000 worked in 
the mines which Colonel Breen managed for the Amalga- 
mated and incidentally for Diaz also. Colonel Breen vis- 
ited a newspaper ofiice in the states where a beautiful 



DIAZ THE DICTATOR. ' Y3 

woman was typesetter. He had never courted her, but he 
approached her with the remark: 

"Tired of the work, aren't you?" 

"Yes, I am." 

"Then let's quit and get married." 

She did, and became the queen of the mines over which 
her husband ruled with almost the power of a czar. 



74 DIAZ TB.% DICTATOR. 



CHAPTER XIX. 
pe:onage. 

Whi^n the commons, which had been used by the poor 
people as they wished, rent free, were given to Americans 
and supporters of Diaz, it not only made some rich and 
ardent friends of the Dictator, but it left some fourteen 
million people without lands to cultivate. They hired out 
to work the farms, operate the mines, and in the towns 
became menials, scavengers, and bearers of burdens. They 
were not only reduced to the lowest possible wage; but in 
many cases were compelled to buy their supplies from com- 
pany or hacienda stores, and were charged such prices that 
they found themselves always in debt. These debts de- 
scended from father to child, so that the peon found him- 
self bound to the land just as serfs were in olden times, 
except that in the case of the peons the bond was a debt. 
When a hacienda was sold the peons went with it. Wages 
ran from six to twenty-five cents a day. The peons dressed 
usually in a single garment, often a mere rag, and ate 
chiefly tortilla beans, and corn ground between stones, as 
being the cheapest articles of diet. They lived in grass 
huts or mud patios, and around their dwelHngs flocks of 
feathered scavengers hovered, perpetually seeking crums 
of tortilla or frijole, Audubon's warbler with its yellow 
breast making the only music that entered their pitiful lives. 

The peon was always an object of interest to the vis- 
iting American, but he seemed only a necessary part of 
the strange land that was half mediaeval and half modern. 
Here was a street car, passing through streets that were 
lined with houses that antedated the advent of Europeans to 
these shores; by side of the mules who pulled it walked 
a man barefooted and with torn sombrero, yet with a 
gaily colored zerape thrown over his shoulder, lashing the 
mules with a quirt. Gambling is so prevalent that even 
the street car tickets contain numbers that may possibly 
draw something at some of the many lotteries. Often one 



DIAZ TI-IK DICTATOR. ' 75 

sees children stark naked in the streets. Street vendors of 
the poor are everywhere crying, ''Gorditas de homo, 
Toman nues/' while flies buzz around their wares. By the 
roadside sit women with smooth stones before them, grind- 
ing corn with something like rolling pins applied to these 
stones, and from a gourd partly filled with precious water 
she mixes the tortilla dough, flattens it between her hands, 
and bakes it on a sheet of iron over charcoals, offering it 
to the passersby. At her side a pot boils with frijole beans. 
Everywhere, among the better class, that is, of course, the 
richer, white umbrellas are carried to shield one from the 
hot sun. The poorer have heavier burdens. The cargadors 
answer for drays, picking up and carrying loads that are 
a perpetual marvel to Americans. There are no old peons ; 
they do not live to be more than thirty. In cold weather 
the poor huddle over pots in which a few sticks burn; for 
their huts let in not only cold, but also the light. Some- 
times mothers in the depths of poverty and degradation lead 
their thirteen and fourteen year old daughters around and 
offer them to Americans for enough to keep the rest of the 
family in life for only a little while. Girls of seventeen 
who have been thus used and discarded, offer their faded 
beauty on the streets, or beg with the urchins for ''solo uno 
centava, senor." But, whether of high or low class, the 
Mexicans are always picturesque, and, like the cat, always 
graceful. 

In Mexico serfdom was brought by the priests from 
Europe and the middle ages ; and when capitaHsm super- 
ceded it, they modified serfdom into capitalistic form, in- 
venting peonage. The seizure of the pubHc lands by Diaz 
made the institution national in scope, while the advertis- 
ing of peon labor brought capital to Mexico from all over 
the world. 

"Yes, they are poor, but they are the happiest people 
on earth," said Colonel Breen to an American who asked 
concerning the peons. It was what Americans said in the 
southern states of the negroes. 

''You wouldn't like to try to be happy in their situ- 
ation ?" 

"H — ! no. I couldn't be happy situated as they are. 



76 DIAZ THE DICTATOR. 

Neither could you. But if you could see them at their 
monthly fandango you would think they never had a care."' 

"I have heard they never smile or sing." 

*'It is a mistake. They seldom smile or sing, but some- 
times they do. It is bad enough, I admit that. But it is 
the Spaniards and the middle-class Americans who treat 
them the worst; just as in the United States, the big cor- 
porations pay the highest wages ; the corporations have no 
time to haggle over trying to keep them in debt. Of couse, 
we get them cheap, but when they work for us they prac- 
tically cease to be peons, and become merely low-grade 
workmen." 

Colonel Breen was trying to excuse himself. He con- 
tinued : 

"On the haciendas armed overseers guard the peon 
workmen during the sixteen hours of labor and see that 
none escape. Often they are lashed. There is no conver- 
sation, no laughter while they toil. Barefooted in summer, 
in winter having only a blanket and sandals, they moil and 
drudge, without schooling, without medical attention, witli- 
out church privileges except as once a month the priest 
comes to tell them to be content with their lot and to col- 
lect all off their penury he can obtain by coaxing and 
threats. They hve in one-room huts of straw and cane, 
without windows or floor, through the cracks of which the 
nipping winds blow cold in winter. Stories are told of 
peons who by working at night built themselves measurably 
comfortable adobe houses, and of overseers who evicted 
them from these houses and turned them into stables for 
stock, leaving the peons to shift for themselves. Things 
are bad enough, heaven knows. I could tell some terrible 
things if I chose to do so." 

"Suppose you do." 

"Down in Yucatan half a dozen men own practically 
all the land, which is poor and hard to cultivate. There 
real slavery exists, though it is carefully concealed, because 
the constitution prohibits slavery. Let a man get in debt 
to another, no difference how free he might have been, no 
difference though he may have been well educated, and he 
is placed at work to pay the debt. He never escapes the 



DIAZ the: dictator. 77 

life, and his children after him are enslaved and sold at 
the will of the master. Guards and bloodhounds keep him 
from escaping, if it was possible for anyone to get awa)' 
where all avenues of escape are owned by the masters and 
are fully patroled by them." 

"Doesn't the government know of this?" 

''Of course it does. But the government b eh eves with 
a certain rich American, that accumulated capital is the 
source of all wealth and should be encouraged. He be- 
lieves with this American that the poor should pay the 
taxes, because they are thriftless and of no benefit to the 
community. There is this about it. The hennepin kings 
are educated and refined — real men." 

"Manhood resting on such suffering?" 

"Sure. It never rested on anything but the bodies 
of others." 

"Won't you tell me ? I am 'safe,' you know." 

"Sure you are safe. No American is going to kick 
on peonage if he sees he will profit from it." 

"Give me some 'modern instances.' " 

"A planter on one of the haciendas lighted his cigar 
as a signal for the beginning of the flogging of a peon who 
had offended, and the beating continued until the cigar was 
smoked out. The victim was carried out unconscious and 
afterward died." 

"Terrible, terrible! What else?" 

"A certain peon, whose feet were literally eaten away 
by lice and flies, was reported as unable to work. The 
overseer asked how long the fellow would live, and being 
told that he would probably not last a week, sent him to the 
field to hobble on his bleeding stumps until he fell dead 
at his toil, 

"Sometimes, when a peon would die, the body would 
be fed to alligators, because a coflin for burial cost $1.50, 
and the master wished to save this expense. But that was 
only business. I do not approve of the licentiousness which 
prevails. In some cases young girls or good looking wives 
are subject to the lechery of the dispoiling foremen. There 
is no recourse for the victim but suicide. But this is an 



78 DIAZ THE DICTATOR. 

inheritance from the past and belongs naturally to the 
Spaniard." 

''These are terrible conditions, indeed." 
''Bad enough, bad enough. Still, they are isolated 
cases. You can no more judge of peonage from these hor- 
rible examples than you could judge of slavery by the few 
who were maltreated under that institution, or of present 
American institutions by the children of the slums who are 
compelled to eat from garbage barrels. In Monterey a 
peon was one day seen leading his sixteen year old daugh- 
ter from house to house with a rope around her neck, offer- 
ing her for sale, and nothing seemed to be thought of it. 
But, then, I recently read where some parents in America 
advertised to give away their baby; so one offsets the 
other." 

"But don't you think Diaz is responsible for it?" 
"There is the shrewdest man in the world," he said. 
"He couldn't prevent peonage any more than you could 
prevent the slum in American cities ; the absorption of the 
land was bound to come in Mexico just as in the United 
States. But seeing that he cannot prevent it, he uses it to 
his advantage. He is a hard duck to dicker with; I know 
from experience ; but I admire him immensely." 
"I have heard he is cruel." 

"So are all Spaniards and Indians. When you handle 
a bramble you must do it with a firm hand. If you would 
have peace you must first fight like the devil. Diaz is 
severe, but that means order and security, and nothing else 
would answer in this country." 

"But it is terrible that people should be treated so." 
"They never have been treated otherwise, and could 
not be treated decently. The greaser is lower than the 
nigger. You can't make anything out of him but a beast 
of burden. I don't believe in cruelty to them any more 
than I do in cruelty to animals, but they must be kept down 
and in their place. Diaz knows it, and does his duty well." 

The certain rich American referred to is T. B. Walker, the big timber 
king. 

Gorditas de homo — Hot cakes for sale. 

Toman nues — Will you have nuts? 

Cargadors — Carriers of burdens. 

Solo uno centavo, sewor-r^Just one cent, Mister, 



DIAZ rut DICTATOR. 79 

CHAPTER XX. 

YAQUI LAND. 

"Ge:nerai., I want to relieve you of a great deal of 
trouble," remarked the governor of Senora to President 
Diaz one day. 

"That is certainly kind," replied the president. "What 
is your proposition? To take my office, or my money?" 

"Neither. To take your quarrel. The Mexican gov- 
ernment has been warring the Yaquis for half a century, 
without making much impression on them. They are a 
hard proposition. They spend all their earnings in buying 
ammunition with which to fight our forces, and those who 
work give all to keep men in the field. You know that 
fellow who joined our army, learned military tactics and 
then employed the knowledge he had gained against us. 
I am getting tired of this." 

"You want to exterminate them, I see. That is ratehr 
summary." 

"It is the final outcome, as you know. The white man 
must take the place of the Indian." 

General Diaz flushed. He remembered that he, too, 
was part Indian. But the governor wisely added: 

"Our destiny, general, Hes with the white people, 
largely with the Anglo-Saxons, as you well know. Well, 
as extermination is the inevitable outcome, why not let it 
come at once ? The United States has deported the Indians 
from the east to western territories, and still the inevitable 
end is extermination. I merely propose to do at once the 
work that has to be done. Give me the use of the army 
and I will clean them out." 

"You want the lands as your reward for doing the 
work, I presume." 

"Of course." 

"Well, go ahead. But I must have my usual commis- 
sion." 

"Oh, certainly." 



80 DIAZ THE DICTATOR. 

The Yaquis were survivors of the Aztecs who were 
conquered by Cortez. After the subjugation of their coun- 
try they fled west to the borders of the Gulf of CaHfornia 
and settled around the Yaqui river. They claimed the land 
was allotted to them by treaty, but the Spaniards deny this. 
It is a rich country, a vast plain, unbroken by aroyo, can- 
yon, or ravine. Every year the river overflows like the 
Nile and distributes a layer of silt that insures a bountiful 
crop. The Yaquis built neither wigwam or tepee, but con- 
structed villages of adobe, with plazas where their own 
bands discoursed music in the evening. In the woods that 
skirted the river, wild ducks, quail, and other game fowls 
were tame as chickens. Deer and mountain sheep ranged 
the hills and wild horses awaited only the lasso and saddle 
to come to their service. Oyster beds at the mouth of the 
river and honita, smelt, mackerel, herring, and other fish 
supplied them food. Life was easy in Yaqui land, and the 
people were hospitable and devout. Before this time there 
had been desultory effort to obtain their lands, but the 
Yaquis resisted to a man, and but httle progress had been 
made in the conquest of these 200,000 people. But now a 
syndicate was behind it, now the dispossessing of the Ya- 
quis was a business proposition, and the work was system- 
atized. The first thing done was to seize on the Yaqui 
bank and confiscate $80,000 that had been deposited therein. 
Next they fired the house of the chief, ravished his wife 
and assaulted a number of Yaqui women. This meant war. 
It was prosecuted with vigor by the syndicate, with the 
aid of rurales and government troops. The chief was cap- 
tured and shot. The Yaquis elected another chief and 
warred as best they could. This gave the syndicate ex- 
cuse to declare them outlaws and to confiscate their lands, 
which thus passed into the hands of the syndicate as rapidly 
as possession of it could be taken. In one case a village 
of Yaquis was captured and so many people, men and 
women, were hanged that the supply of rope gave out and 
it was necessary to use the same rope five or six times. 
Another time two hundred Yaquis, men, women and chil- 
dren, were taken in a gunboat and dropped into the ocean, 
all perishing. A reward of one hundred dollars was offered 



DIAZ THE) DICTATOR. 81 

to every soldier who would kill a Yaqui, the presentation of 
the ears to the authorities to be the evidence in the case. 
There exists in the city of Mexico a picture of a string of 
ears that was brought in at one time, a minor official being 
taken with them, wearing a broad smile of satisfaction. 
The Yaquis fled to the woods and mountain fastnesses, 
from which they would descend on Spanish villages. Once 
they captured a town, and 600 Spanish women and chil- 
dren, taking them to the mountains in revenge for the 
cruelty that had been practiced on their own families. 
Straggling Yaquis were captured and asked for informa- 
tion as to where the Yaquis were in hiding, and many were 
hung because they refused to betray their people. Some 
put the rope around their own necks and told the soldiers 
to hang them at once and not insult them with a demand 
that -they prove traitors. The Yaqui lands were seized, 
together with all the property the people had, and the 
Yaquis scattered and hired out, some times becoming peons 
with American and Mexican planters and miners. They 
were liked, because they were the best workers that could 
be obtained, strong, clean, independent, athletic. 

But now a new element entered into the warfare of 
extermination. The hennepin kings of Yucatan wanted 
more slaves, and offered an average price of $65 for every 
Yaqui delivered to them. It was a splendid business propo- 
sition, and the deportation of the Yaquis began. While 
the men were away the little brown women and their chil- 
dren were stolen away, driven on boats and carried to 
Yucatan. Yaqui workingmen were taken from mines, rail- 
roads and farms, and driven over the long road to the 
gulf coast, many dying on the way, then crowded into the 
hold of boats and shipped until they came to the land of 
slavery. This work of deportation, after the capture was 
effected, netted one man, who received $10 for every slave 
delivered, $150,000 in four years. The business was so 
profitable that more than Yaquis were taken, other Indians, 
who had never resisted the government, being captured and 
''sold south." In many cases peons belonging to small 
planters were taken and deported. On the long journey 
the men would carry the children on their shoulders, and 



82 DIAZ THE DICTATOR. 

when the weak would die, would bury them by the side of 
the road. On arriving at Yucatan the families were sep- 
arated, and broken up. Then the women were compelled 
to marry Chinamen, being whipped until they consented; 
for every child they bore was worth $200 to the hennepin 
kings who owned them. Yucatan is a hot, malarious coun- 
try, and the slaves were worked from twelve to sixteen 
hours a day. Many died within a few months, but even 
when sick they were forced into service until they fell at 
their toil. If they resisted they were whipped with wet 
ropes that broke the skin at every blow. 

"What brutes these hennepin kings must be !" ex- 
claimed an American whose peons had been taken from him. 

"On the contrary," replied Colonel Breen, "they are 
refined and educated men, living in elegance and taste." 

"How can it be when they permit such atrocities?" 

"It couldn't be otherwise. It never is. Men who work 
never have time for refinement, never have opportunity 
for education and elegance. It is the worker who is de- 
graded, not the man who benefits from his work. Don't 
be squeamish. It may seem cruel, but so is it cruel to kill 
and eat beef. But that is what makes men strong and fat. 
It is so in this case." 

"But they took my peons." 

"Let us be quiet as to that. What right had you to 
have peons?" 

"I treated them decently. They were satisfied with 
me. But they were taken away and sold where they are 
treated in the most shameful and barbaric manner." 

"Yet it is wise warfare," was the reply. "Americans 
spent three generations in deporting the Indians, first to 
Kansas, then to Indian territory, and after all this, it is 
necessary to destroy them. Was I not here when the 
Americans ran Geronimo down into Sonora, where he and 
his Apaches hid in the mountains and the miner was in 
constant danger of death? The old saying is right: 'The 
only good Indian is a dead Indian.' He must be run out, 
and the quicker it is done the more humane it is." 

It was not long after this until the Yaquis were prac- 
tically exterminated, and the lands they had held were 



DIAZ rut DICTATOR. 83 

offered on the market. Americans began to flock to Senofa 
and invest where the returns were sure to be enormous. 
One day Colonel Breen met the American who had ob- 
jected to the deportation of the Yaquis, and said: 

"Don't you see I was right? Instead of the Indian, we 
are now to have a white man's state. It was worth a great 
deal to you to have this done. Think of it. Senora will 
yield $20,000,000 of silver a year, and our copper properties 
will double in value. It is another California to be ex- 
ploited. You can raise eight crops of alfalfa a year in 
Senora." 

The American was less inclined to complain than he 
had been, because he saw as well as anyone the advantage 
it would be to him. Afterward at the City of Mexico he 
heard that the president had wept when he was told of the 
harsh measures that had been used with the Yaquis, say- 
ing that he was sorry repression was necessary. 

"And I had thought of him as a barbarian, an Indian," 
he said to a learned American who was in the city. 

"Perhaps he is. But he is also from one of the great- 
est and oldest families in the world, a true descendant of a 
great man. Bartholomew Diaz preceded DeGama to the 
southern extremity of Africa before America was known 
to the Europeans, and though he failed to find the pas- 
sage to India, Batholomew Columbus, who was with him, 
gave his brother the idea that led to the discovery of Amer- 
ica, presenting his plan to Henry VII before Christopher 
took it up. Diaz is of an old family, who helped in the 
early days of discovery." 

"Yet they tell us that Porfirio is cruel." 

"Rather," responded the learned American. "He has 
the paw of a cat, which is as soft as velvet and as sharp 
as a knife. He has the voice of a cat that both purrs and 
screams." 

"Then he realizes his guilt?" 

"He does not know he is guilty. Did you ever see a 
cat returning from the devouring of a bird she has caught, 
licking her chops, switching her tail? A moment later she 
is lying on the rug purring softly, gentle and kindly-eyed 
under your caressing hand. She feels at peace with the 



84 DIAZ THE DICTATOR. 

world, and, so far from having qualms of conscience, so 
far from apologizing for a manifestation of that which 
was a part of her nature, she was immensely satisfied with 
herself as an exponent of virture. That cat is Porfirio 
Diaz. I saw him after the slaughter of Juchitan receive a 
delegation of school children, and he was all gentleness, 
all benevolence, and apparently as innocent as any of the 
little ones." 



DIAZ THE DICTATOR. ' 85 



CHAPTER XXL 

STRAINING AT TB.^ BONDS. 



''SoMie DAY there will come a strike in Mexico," said 
Colonel Breen. "You know how they came in America at 
a certain stage of development — at Homestead, at Pullman, 
at Chicago. We shall find how much better these things 
are handled where the government has a financial inter- 
est in the concern where the strike occurs." 

Striking began at Orizaba in the state of Vera Cruz. 
There were nearly a hundred textile mills in Mexico, which 
unitedly paid $2,000,000 revenue to the government annu- 
ally. Several of these were situated in the state of Vera 
Cruz and working conditions were reported to be very bad. 
A strike was in progress at Pueblo, and the operators at 
Orizaba were financially aiding the strikers. Complaint 
was made of this action, and the Orizaba mills closed down, 
thus cutting off this source of revenue the strikers had. 
Then the Orizaba workmen made demands for better con- 
ditions ere they resumed work, turning the lockout into a 
strike, and sending a delegate to the president in order to 
elicit his sympathy. Aid was promised and soldiers were 
dispatched to Orizaba. Before they arrived there was a 
riot in which a store was burned, but the civil authorities 
restored order and work was resumed in the mills by the 
strikers, who relied on the government to give them justice. 
Nevertheless, soldiers were posted behind pillars and walls 
when the troops arrived, and when the workmen, men and 
women, were on their way to work in the early morning, 
suddenly a terrible fusilade was opened upon them. The 
unarmed people who were not wounded tried to flee, but 
were shot down as they ran. Some stumbled on ever pros- 
trate bodies, with blood streaming from their own wounds 
as they ran. Others sHpped on spattered brains that 
snowed the street, and were in turn shot as they tried to 
'rise. Women and children were screaming, seeking in 
vain to escape amid the smoke. They were followed into 



86 DIAZ the: dictator. 

the streets, into the fields, even up into the mountains. 
When the workmen took refuge in their own houses, they 
were shot through the windows and the houses were set 
on fire. The slaughter was so terrible that at last the 
rurales themselves refused to proceed further, and some of 
them were shot for insubordination. More than 600 men, 
women and children perished that day. At night some 500 
mangled bodies were piled on flat cars and covered from 
sight with straw. The funeral train was driven to Vera 
Cruz and the dead were transferred to boats. Then the 
bodies were taken out to sea and thrown to the sharks. 

The next strike occurred in Colonel Breen's mills at 
Cannanea. It is rumored that Colonel Breen wanted a 
strike in order to force down the stock that he might ac- 
quire a larger interest in it. The workmen were unor- 
ganized and had not thought of striking until the order 
came suddenly from some unknown source to quit work. 
Everyone of the 3,000 miners laid down his tools. More- 
over, they entered into the spirit of the strike with a deter- 
mination to win and proceeded to a large lumber yard in 
order to provoke a sympathetic strike there. As they drew 
near, the managers of the lumber yard turned the hose on 
them, and they, angered by the attack, responded by charg- 
ing the managers and beating them to death with their fists. 
At this point two proprietors of the lumber yard came on 
the scene and fired on the crowd, killing several of the 
strikers. Colonel Breen now came to the yard in an auto- 
mobile, and following him quickly, in some mysterious man- 
ner, came 300 rangers from the state of Arizona, and sev- 
eral Americans. The latter were speedily armed with guns 
which Colonel Breen had stored in his cellar in anticipa- 
tion of such an event. Then the battle began. Colonel 
Breen stood in his automobile at the head of a street, pour- 
ing round after round into the ranks of the Mexicans in 
the street. American soldiers and American citizens, 
equally well posted, shot often into the helpless crowd. It 
was a battle between Greasers and Gringoes. With bare 
hands the Mexicans rushed again and again toward the 
Breen automobile, but each time were repulsed, until the 
street was paved with human bodies. After the strikers 



DIAZ the: dictator. ' 87 

were all dead or wounded, the Americans went from house 
to house shooting in at doors and windows. 

The next day the rurales came to make arrests. Not 
an American was apprehended. Only the strikers and their 
friends were taken and thrust into the hurriedly constructed 
stockades. When all who were rebellious against working 
conditions had been rounded up, they were taken into the 
hills and hung to trees. The mysterious invasion of Mex- 
ico by American troops was not resented by Diaz. 

Soon after these events President Diaz issued a proc- 
lamation in which he fixed the limit of wages that could 
be paid in various occupations. To pay more became ille- 
gal. To ask for more was rebellion. It illustrated the 
value to capitalists of having at the head of affairs a man 
who was financially interested in their business. 

Yet this was the beginning of the end of Colonel 
Breen. He was ambitious for himself, and refused to be 
ruled by the copper trust. As a result the copper trust 
"rolled" him. When his fortunes began to decline, family 
troubles came. Within a few years, deserted by his friends 
and left again almost penniless, he took up his home in 
the mountains, a hermit of business. The circle was com- 
pleted and the romance of business with him had ended 
in tragedy. 

This Drama of Business, this fourth act of the re- 
markable life of Porfirio Diaz, here finds its end. Each 
of these acts might be worked into a five act drama, com- 
plete within itself, and all of these dramas might be made 
into a larger five act play. 



DIAZ TH^ DICTATOR. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

UNITING TWO NATIONS. 



At this point the Jesuit, Violeta, came from Rome to 
Mexico seeking an audience with Diaz. He was the man 
who, as papal delegate, had effected settlement of the friar 
land problem in the PhiHppines through the good offices of 
Judge Benjamin Daft. Judge Daft was now secretary of 
state in the United States, and a candidate for the nomina- 
tion for the presidency. 

"I have heard much of General Diaz in Europe," be- 
gan the nuncio. "There he is regarded as a soldier and 
statesman equal to the first Caesar. I do not wish to flatter 
you, but the Holy Father regards you as among the few 
really great men of all time." 

Diaz was clearly impressed. ''His hohness does me 
too much honor," he said. "If there is any way in which 
I can show my appreciation of his good will, I shall be 
glad to do so." 

But Violeta was too astute a diplomat to make the 
request at that time. He first made himself agreeable to 
the president, and then paid his respects to his wife, a 
good Catholic, in order to get the benefit of her influence. 
It was more than a week before he stated the object of 
his visit to Mexico. Then he began : 

"When Mexico controlled the state of California, the 
Mexican nation supported several missions in that state, 
but payment ceased when transfer of the state was made to 
the United States. It is the desire of the Holy Father at 
Rome that Mexico should make good what she owes on 
these missions." 

The beady eyes of the president glittered angrily, but 
he replied in even voice : 

"California has been recognized as one of the United 
States since 1846, hence Mexico can owe nothing of the 
claim you make." 



DIAZ THi: DICTATOR. • . 89 

"A matter of opinion, your excellency. But we will 
say no more of the matter at present." 

The next day the nuncio telegraphed to Washington 
a statement of the case, with a request that the state de- 
partment, of which Judge Daft was the head, use its good 
offices with Diaz in the matter. The dispatch ended with 
the words, in cypher : "Thus you may add to the gratitude 
which your tolerant and impartial settlement of the friar 
land controversy in the Philippines inspired in the CathoUcs 
of your favored country." 

A few days later the state department at Washington 
opened negotiations with Mexico, and Diaz went to Pueblo 
for advice. 

"You see," Pueblo explained to Diaz,, "Judge Daft 
is candidate for president of the United States, and nat- 
urally wishes the good opinion of the Catholics, who con- 
trol two million votes. The granting of this request will 
mean his election. It will also place him under obligation 
to you, and you may find his good offices desirable later on." 

"In what way could he benefit me?" 

"Well, you know there is a junta in the United States 
which is beginning to agitate against your administration. 
It would be convenient for you to have in the presidential 
chair at Washington a man who was under obligations to 
you, for he could turn these men over to you." 

Forthwith the claim of $1,500,000 for contributions to 
California missions was allowed by Diaz. Violeta had won 
again. 

"You see," explained the nuncio when he came to ex- 
press his gratitude to the president, "Mexico and the United 
States will of necessity be brought into closer relations 
from now on. Indeed, your excellency, through securing 
American capital for the development of your wonderful 
resources, has contributed greatly to that result. Moreover, 
we are n(fw in a position where we can be of great service 
to you, both here and in America. Not only through our 
American and foreign press can we secure your reputa- 
tion, but we are now in a position where the Catholics 
practically control America and will more fully control it 
in the future." 



90 DIAZ THi: DICTATOR. 

"I have noticed claims of that nature made by Ameri- 
can prelates. But on what do you base the claim?" 

''We first demonstrated our power in poHtics by twice 
electing Cleveland president. Mr. Hanna saw the situa- 
tion, and freely declared that in the future the church 
would become the bulwark of present institutions against 
rising rebellion and majorities shifted to the other party 
by nearly a million. Since then we have been courted by 
the big capitalists and the party of the big capitalists. We 
have already had, to all intents and purposes, two CathoHc 
presidents, and will also elect Judge Daft. In time the Phil- 
ippinos and they of Porto Rico will vote. They are very 
largely Catholics, and, added to the balance of power which 
we now hold in the United States, will almost give us a 
majority of the votes. We may be losing ground in Spain, 
but we are gaining with the Anglo-Saxon." 

The president made no reply, but the nuncio knew 
that his words had had their effect. A few days later he 
was talking with a prelate in the United States. Then 
he said : 

"If we can induce America to take up the territory 
to its possessions at Panama, it would give us full control. 
Even as it is, with the peon denied a vote, it would give 
us control of the United States. Or if, as seems possible, 
the peon was made a citizen, the majority would be all the 
greater. It is excellent politics for us to urge the freeing 
of the peons as we urged the relief of the Cubans. It 
would arouse the Americans, and, whatever might come, 
would result in additional power for us." 

The prelate considered a moment and then said: 

"Diaz is growing old. He cannot last much longer, 
and after him will come the deluge. He is admitting the 
American from the north and must do so, and soon his 
country will be between two jaws, Panama and the United 
States." 

"He knows it, and the big capitalists of the United 
States know it. Diaz understands that if the wrong man 
comes into power there will be uprisings in Mexico and 
America will have to interfere in order to protect Ameri- 
can property and life. It is a condition that has come upon 



DIAZ THK DICTATOR. 91 

Diaz because of his encouraging of foreign capital, and 
he sees it, now that it is too late. His sole hope for an 
integral existence for Mexico lies in securing a successor 
after his own order, and he is going to be very jealous of 
his power from now on." 



It was after the "Rum, Romanism and Rebellion" speech of Burchard 
that Blaine was defeated and Cleveland elected. Afterward, when Hanna 
had made his declaration that Catholicism would prove the chief pro- 
tection against Socialism, the vote was changed to a degree that was a 
surprise to all. Since then, the heirarchy has been the chief support of 
the party of the big capitalists. It was e-ood politics on its part to sup- 
port the party of the small capitalists after slavery had gone under ; but 
it was better politics to become identified with the party of big capital- 
ism when the change to the trust was effected. 



92 DIAZ the: dictator. 



CHAPTER XXIIL 

"GRI:aTER I.OVI: HATH NO MAN." 

He:rE some will object that this is not a love story. 
But it is. Only, love is crowded underneath, as it always 
is in real life; submerged through the effort of some to 
remain at the top; always drowning, but never dead. 

Imagine it. In the heart of everyone of the millions 
of peons blossomed the divine flower, sparkled the heav- 
enly gem, which for a time transformed even the ugly sur- 
roundings into beauty. Think of the grinding toil that 
sapped the strength; of the humiliation of beatings and of 
being nothing; of being forced by those in power over 
them to drag the flower of love in the dirt of prostitution ; 
of seeing loved children, fruit of that blossoming glory, 
growing weak or brutal at the task, having neither educa- 
tion or hope. All this to satisfy the ambition of the few. 
This is part of the story of love, ever ending and never 
ended. 

Among the mated Yaquis struggling to maintain homes 
and raise families, love found a place in many manifesta- 
tions. The first blush of maiden love; the untold tender- 
ness of marital affection; the unspeakable love that is born 
of two and becomes flesh; parental love wearing itself to 
naught for Httle ones. Imagine this all brushed aside to 
please the ambitions and desires of a few. Imagine thou- 
sands of Yaquis driven to exile, families separated never 
to meet again, property confiscated, all made slaves and 
scattered so no one knew where others of the family were. 
Imagine wives forced to mate with yellow Chinamen, un- 
der threat of the lash on the bare back, so that they might 
rear children for purposes of slavery. This is the story 
of ten thousand Evangelines, the supreme tragedy of Love. 

In the Valle Nacional where mechanics who sought 
work to support their families and then disappeared forever, 
the dispaired ones struggled under the lash, hopeless and 
yet completing terrible tragedies of love. Young girls who 



DIAZ TH^ DICTATOR. 93 

had gone to the dance with their sweethearts were locked 
up under pretext of crime, taken to the Valle and there 
forced to become both slaves and mistresses. Sometimes 
men of wealth, who resisted the action of the authorities, 
were in a day transformed into slaves, with the prospect 
of only a year of life before them, and that a Hfe of un- 
speakable drudgery. Surely these are cases of love turned 
awry. 

Here are a thousand pictures for the imagination, 
sacred with tenderness and sweet with sorrow. Here are 
tragedies and poems that were written on human hearts 
with daggers. And behind it all lies the diaboHcal love of 
power and of gold and of the service of sense. The love 
of money is the root of evil ! 

But this is not all the love this story holds. At the 
first there were men who suffered hardships for love of 
their country. Now there began to arise a class, with a 
love transcending all others, ready to sacrifice for it com- 
fort, home, life and even the more personal love of com- 
panion and children. This is the racial love. 

A junta was formed, and Flores Ricardo Magon elected 
president. He was forced to forego the pleasant surround- 
ings that had been his, and flee to America. Rivera and 
Villareal went with him. In St. Louis they started a little 
paper, with a meager circulation, in which they ventured 
to declare their love and hope of Mexican freedom. The 
United States considered this a hostile act, and they were 
forced to flee. Hiding in Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas, 
finally fleeing to Canada, love did not desert them, for 
they afterward returned to the United States, to CaHfornia. 
Here they were arrested, charged with violating a city ordi- 
nance against spitting on the sidewalk, and lodged in jail. 
When this charge would not hold, another charge was 
made, and then another. They remained in an American 
prison more than a year, without trial, part of the time 
denied the right to see or communicate with their friends 
on the outside. And through it all the racial love, the 
dear love of comrades, failed them not. 

In far Mexico there was another family, old and 
wealthy, who, smitten with this love, spoke things that 



94 DIAZ rut dictator. 

offended. Their stock was killed by night, and they left 
their property and hurriedly sought the United States. 
Antonio and Theresa Villareal-Gonzoles, sisters of one of 
the men in prison, supported their aged father by hard 
work, to which they had never been accustomed, denying 
themselves clothing, the joy of womankind, that they might 
spend more on the junta. Lovers they had in Mexico, but 
they renounced the partial for the general love. 

"We cannot wed till Mexico is free," they said. 

In this land of the free, where a Kossuth was once 
welcomed when a political refugee, these frail girls were 
hounded by Pinkertons who secured their dismissal from 
place after place ; but still they struggled on, until Antonio 
was styled the Joan of Arc of Mexican liberty. "But 1 am 
not," she said. "These hands are too small to grasp the 
sword and battle-axe, and wield them in behalf of my be- 
loved people. But they are not too small to grasp the pen 
and write things for the sake of liberty." 

At another point in the land of Manana Gueterrez De 
Lara, a former diplomat and circuit judge, a man whose 
family had been prominent in public affairs for genera- 
tions, caught the new spirit, surrendering his office, and 
came with his wife to America to do, he knew not what, 
only to give expression to his love for liberty. Here he 
came upon a newspaper reporter, John K. Turner, and 
told him of conditions in his native land. 

"I should like to see it for myself," said Turner. 

"I will go with you and show you," was the reply. 

They disguised themselves and went, at the risk of 
their lives. Turner as a wealthy American seeking invest- 
ment, DeLara as a Mexican friend finding him a location. 
It seemed a little thing to do, but it was a seed that was 
destined to bear fruit. 

The tiny paper with its small circulation was a trifle 
compared with the two mighty nations now related in in- 
vestments, and with the thousands of great presses that 
were silenced as to Mexican conditions. The self-sacri- 
fice of the Villareal girls was buried from sight amid the* 
sky-scrappers and pretentious mansions of American capi- 
talists. But paper and sacrifice were seeds that were des- 



DIAZ THE DICTATOR. 95 

tined, perhaps, from the very fact that they were buried 
from sight, to sprout and grow. And the germ of these 
Hving seeds was love. Love never faileth. And now abide, 
faith, hope and love ; but the greatest of these is love. 

At this time the revolution began prematurely. But 
the suffering peons could not be held off longer. Attack 
was made on Las Vacas, on the northern border of Mexico, 
on June 28, 1908. The ragged and poorly armed revolu- 
tionists made assault after assault on the soldiers who de- 
fended the town. The battle continued from early morn- 
ing until noon. The barracks of the soldiers were burned. 
Then the revolutionists, being out of ammunition, ceased 
their attacks, and the battle was over. 

"It is the Socialists you have to face now," said Pueblo 
to Diaz. "It will require alertness and skill to meet the 
situation." He was only a colonel on the president's per- 
sonal staff, yet he dared to say things that others dared not. 
"Vigor I think will be sufficient," replied the president. 
"It was not so with Bismarck in Germany." 
"But the SociaHsts are few in North America." 
"As capitaHsm develops they will increase in numbers. 
You might kill all there are today, and tomorrow there 
would be a new crop." 

Diaz had now had long experience as a ruler and was 
incHned to trust his own judgment. Of late he had been 
reading Machiavelli and Nietzsche, and was pleasantly sur- 
prised to find reflected in their bold utterances his own pri- 
vate views. It pleased him to read instruction to "men of 
the clan of the lion and the tribe of the eagle" how to 
"govern, deceive and exploit the vast multitudes of submis- 
sive creatures and mental degenerates who habitually place 
their trust in voting and praying and toiling rather than 
in gold and iron." He read with interest the "process of 
manipulating public opinion to suit any intended purpose, 
so that one might win applause, master states and become 
a tyrant." He mused over expressions like these: "Man 
must be trained for war and women for the relaxation of 
the warrior. All else is folly." "Thou shalt love no one 
but thy friend, and above all, thou shalt hate thy enemy." 



96 DIAZ THE DICTATOR. 

"When the mob is about to play the tyrant, we must invent 
a stronger tyrant than they." "Compassion is a miserable 
weakness. It spoils and befuddles popular judgment, and 
ruins men for action." "I have laughed many times over 
the weaklings who thought they were 'good' because they 
had lame paws." "Vigorous eras, noble civilizations, see 
something contemptible in 'sympathy,' in 'brotherly love,' 
and in the lack of self-assertion and self-rehance." "The 
highest specimens of the human race are not those of the 
lamb-like disposition, but those in whom the soul of the 
lion predominates — in whom angry passions rage. The ideal 
man is ever a man of rebehious and ungovernable nature; 
he whom no law can reign over and no master terrify. 
The word obedience is not in his vocabulary. He looks 
with scorn upon the petty rules and petty idols of the petty 
millions, but, knowing he is in a dangerous minority, he 
thinks and acts and says nothing — not even to his friend. 
In him is the spirit of the lion. He prowls. He masters 
others and is not mastered." "The unity of the human 
species is an illusion. There are many breeds of men, and 
each one of them different in origin and in material, dif- 
ferent in body, mind and soul. There is no uniformity in 
the birth or lives or blood or brains of men. Hence the 
equality of men, so loudly voiced by the messiahs and 
rabbis and rabble and politicians, is the most absurd of all 
falsehoods." The Dictator read and smiled. He saw the 
way of the mighty, and it was the way in which he had 
walked alone. "I shall," he thought, "say nothing, but I 
understand better than Pueblo. I shall be able to circum- 
vent rebellion and even the Jesuit learned in these things ; 
for now I have his books." 

Diaz rushed troops to the border. He called on the 
president of the United States, who sent soldiers to patrol 
the northern bank of the Rio Grande. Every revolutionist 
the Americans found was thrown into jail. The revolu- 
tionists the Mexican soldiers apprehended were promptly 
shot. A reward of $100 was offered by the Dictator for 
every revolutionist slain, and it is said that the soldiers 
slaughtered innocent peons by the wholesale, exhibiting 
their bodies as evidence of the death of revolutionists, and 



DIAZ THK DICTATOR. 97 

SO enriched themselves. For weeks after the battle the 
air around Las Vacas was foul with the smell of rotting 
peons. When news of the battle of Las Vacas reached 
other portions of Mexico, there were other uprisings, but 
there was no concert of action, and the revolutionists were 
speedily beaten down. 

Those who had been most active in the demonstrations 
fled to the United States. Meantime an election occurred 
in that country, and, after the lapse of several months, 
Judge Daft became president of the northern republic. So 
soon as he took up the reins of government the prosecu- 
tion of the revolutionists began in the United States. After 
being held at Los Angeles incommunicado for several 
months, Magon and his associates were taken, without their 
attorney being informed, and under heavy guard, to Ari- 
zona, for trial on charge of conspiring to violate the neu- 
trality law. They were found guilty and sentenced to a 
penitentiary in the United States for eighteen months. 

Then the prosecution of other revolutionists in the 
United States began. Aged Guerra, who could not speak 
English, said the interpreter told him his attorney in- 
structed him to plead guilty, and, doing this, he received' 
his sentence to a federal prison. Afterward it appeared 
that the attorney had told him not to plead guilty. I\lanuel 
Sarabia was imprisoned before the people understood. 
Aurojo for violating neutrality laws was- railroaded to 
prison in Kansas. One by one revolutionists were arrested, 
tried and convicted until there were twenty Mexicans in 
prison in the United States. The Mexican junta was scat- 
tered and inoperative. 

"You were right," said Diaz to Pueblo, in urging the 
wisdom of putting the American president under obliga- 
tions to me. Except for his help I would not have been 
able to accomplish what I have done. But how you erred 
in saying that I could not crush that rebellion ! Your error 
is really amusing." 

"As to that," replied the millionaire valet, "that matter 
has not yet been decided. You will 'yet have need of the 
discretion and wisdom which I suggested to you." 

Diaz smiled, but said nothing. 



98 DIAZ the: dictator. 



CHAPTER XXiV. 

AGITATION AND ADVERTISING. 

Now the Appeal to Reason entered on the scene. It 
was a SociaHst paper published in the United States, with 
a circulation of nearly half a million. It began to uncover 
conditions in Mexico, telHng of the pitiable pHght of the 
peons; of the rape of the republic by the Dictator; of the 
massacre of Juchitan ; of strikes and how they had been 
crushed with an iron hand ; of the fate of the Yaquis ; of 
American invasion of and investment in Mexico; and of 
how the American press had hidden these things from the 
world. Editions of more than a million were printed and 
distributed. The exposure created a decided sensation. The 
Chicago Daily SociaHst, the New York Call, Wilshire's 
Magazine, the Miners' Magazine, Cleveland Citizen and a 
dozen other Socialist and labor papers joined in the agita- 
tion. The matter began to be copied and commented on in 
Europe. Mother Jones, veteran of a thousand battles, took 
the field, sowing the light. Louella Twining, the beloved 
heroine of the Colorado labor war, enlisted in the new 
cause which was a continuation of the old. Debs, the elo- 
quent tongue of labor, raised his voice in protest. The 
Political Refugee Defense League, which had been organ- 
ized to combat the new president's tendency to turn Rus- 
sian refugees back to the bloody czar, as evidenced by more 
than a hundred cases, came to the aid of the imprisoned 
Mexicans. 

"In trying to confine the fires to Mexico," arose the 
cry of Antonio Villareal, "Diaz has scattered them abroad 
over two nations." 

Such things had not been told in America before. The 
capitalists who had had their way in the southern "repubHc" 
were astonished. 

The capitalist press came "out with denials and denun- 
ciations. In response, the Appeal showed how these papers 
were merely defending their own property interests in 



DIAZ TUt DICTATOR. ' 99 

Mexico, having been granted concessions and other favors 
by the Dictator, and hence were incapable of presenting a 
correct report of things. Pablo Pueblo was shown^ to 
have been right, and Diaz sat appalled at the new situation. 
He could neither understand it or see how to meet it. 

Following this Carlo de Fornaro, artist and author 
who had lived in Mexico, published a book in which he set 
forth the horrors that country endured, and the American 
people bought and read his book. The sentiment of the 
people of the United States began to change, and, from 
being regarded as a great and benevolent ruler, Diaz was 
ranked with the tyrant of Russia. It was shown that the 
department of labor in this country was advertising to sup- 
ply Mexican labor to farmers, railroads and such as would 
apply for it, and that thousands of Mexicans were already 
working in the United States at prices far below what 
Americans received. 

Finally the American Magazine took up the matter 
and printed a series of articles by John K. Turner, De 
Lara's companion, exposing what it termed "Barbarous 
Mexico." In vain did Diaz threaten libel suits and boy- 
cotts. The publication proceeded just the same. 

All this was having its effect, not only in the United 
States, but in Mexico as well. Through the press and the 
unions demand was made on the American government 
that the same refuge be afforded to political agitators which 
in other days was accorded to Kossuth and Pulaski. De- 
mand was made that the government refuse to deliver to 
the Dictator escaped peons, even as various states had in 
the past refused to deliver to the masters escaped slaves 
from the south. Denunciation of the f ederal^ spies and the 
Pinkertons who were aiding Mexican authorities in appre- 
hending political exiles was boldly made. In Mexico the 
vast circulation that had been given to reports which the 
revolutionists there had so long struggled in vain to ex- 
ploit, awakened hope and enthusiasm such as had not been 
known there for years. The secret press began work again. 
Though the president of the junta was in prison, his mar- 
tyrdom awakened thousands who before had been indiffer- 
ent. The situation was really alarming to Diaz, more so 



100 DIAZ THi: DICTATOR. 

than at any time during his incumbency of the office. 

"What were best to do?" he asked of Pueblo. 

"Send for Violeta and let us discuss the situation," 
was the reply. 

The nuncio was called and the matter laid before him. 

"The church," said the nuncio, "is, as Senator Hanna 
pointed out, best able to combat the agitation of the Social- 
ists. It is a world-wide institution, and can be of great 
aid to you in rehabilitating you in the United States. Al- 
ready we are doing great things against SociaHsm there. 
Now we have great things we can do for you. If it was 
the press which awakened this opposition, then the press is 
strong enough to stifle it. We must have the united sup- 
port of the press of Mexico and the United States." 

"How can this be secured? It will cost immensely." 

"It will cost you nothing — now. Your birthday, your 
excellency, is the 16th of September." 

"It is." 

"That, too, is the birthday of the president of the 
United States, Judge Daft. It is also the day which the 
Mexican people celebrate as their independence day. If 
we could get Judge Daft to come to Texas to meet you 
there on that day, it would make an event that would be 
written about by every paper in the two republics if not 
throughout the whole world. The fact that it celebrated 
Mexican independence would sound well. The fact that 
Judge Daft would meet you and speak of you as one of 
the greatest men of history, would, under these circum- 
stances, give you advertisement a hundredfold greater than 
the Socialist press has given you in an adverse way, and 
would completely rehabilitate you before the world." 

The beady eyes of the president twinkled. The ad- 
vertisement promised by this movement appealed to him 
strongly, and the dramatic effect of it he did not underesti- 
mate. It was what Nicholas had sought in visiting Edward 
in England. "Can it be effected? " he asked. 

"I am sure of it. Judge Daft will not refuse anything 
in reason which I propose to him, because he realizes what 
we may be able to do for him in aiding or crippling his 
administration and also in the matter of a second term." 



DIAZ the: dictator. ' 101 

"In the meantime," suggested Pueblo, "it would have 
a good effect in counteracting the adverse publications, for 
President Diaz to announce that he would welcome an 
opposition party that was loyal to Mexico and Mexican 
institutions. It would be within itself a complete answer 
to all that has been said against him." 

"The idea is commendable," assented Violeta. "All 
that is required is intelligent action, but action." 

In accordance with this advice. President Diaz ap- 
peared in an interview in which he said that at last his dis- 
cipline had borne the fruit he designed, and that the Mex- 
ican people showed signs of being able to govern them- 
selves. For this reason he would welcome an opposition 
party which was loyal to Mexico and not be subversive of 
civilization and security. At the same time the nuncio was 
dispatched to Washington to mak-e arrangements for the 
coup that would give him greater advertising than ruler 
had ever received before. 



102 DIAZ THE DICTATOR. 

CHAPTER XXV. 

GATHERING SHADOWS. 

"They have taken the old man at his word," said 
Violeta to an American prelate while he was in Washing- 
ton, "and Reyes is daring to come out as a candidate for 
vice president against the man that Diaz has chosen for 
the place." 

"Yes, the shadows are gathering about the head of 
Diaz," responded the prelate. "In addition to the agita- 
tion of the proletarians, now the middle class of the United 
States, is feeling it can no longer stand for him and his 
methods ; and even in Mexico they dare to suggest a popu- 
lar choice for office. With, both the working class and the 
middle class in rebellion, and with the Dictator standing in 
the valley of the shadow, there is sure to be an inter- 
esting situation in Mexico soon." 

"This is the reason that Diaz insists on his own choice 
as candidate for vice president. It is demanded by Ameri- 
can investors, as assurance of protection to their interests 
in case of his death, that the man who handled so ably the 
Yaqui matter be placed in line to succeed the aged Diaz." 

"I do not think Diaz is as apprehensive of natural 
death, even at his age, as he is of assassination. They tell 
me that he is constantly surrounded by a strong guard, and 
that he is really afraid to leave his capital. 

"More than that, he has his fortune in cash and keeps 
a ship in readiness, so that he could leave the country at a 
moment's notice. He has been studying the flight of Castro 
and of Abdul Hamid, and is prepared to follow their ex- 
ample if it should at any time be necessary. I am satisfied 
that he is in a state of absolute terror." 

"The visit of President Daft may restore his prestige." 

"It may. But it is more likely to call attention to the 
commercial opportunities open in Mexico and at the same 
time inspire the people with the feeling that the present 
order there is almost at an end. It is likely to set them to 



DIAZ THE DICTATOR. 103 

thinking what to do next. It may lead to a demand for 
protection of American interests by the soldiers of Uncle 
Sam, which would mean more territory. Our future lies 
with the Anglo-Saxon, I am satisfied of that." 

Then the two men put their heads close together and 
talked in undertones. 

When the candidacy of General Reyes was announced, 
Diaz was thrown into a rage. He sent for Pueblo, and 
bitterly complained of the result of his advice in offering 
freedom of political action. The next thing he did was to 
send troops to Guadalajara, where meetings had been an- 
nounced favoring the candidacy of the popular soldier. 
These meetings were promptly suppressed as being inimical 
to public peace. Then speakers were sent down to present 
the government's side of the situation. This was on sug- 
gestion of Pueblo, who still hoped to conciliate the peo- 
ple. But they, maddened at the suppression of their own 
speakers, and with the quick temper of the Spaniard, threw 
missiles at the speakers. 

"This," said Diaz, "is proof that the Mexican people 
are not yet ready for self-government." ^ 

So he ordered a general arrest of the supporters of 
Reyes. The people resisted and built barricades. Then 
the soldiers began their work, fired on the people and killed 
many of them. Over five thousand persons were arrested 
and thrown in prison, many of them being sent to Belem 
and San Juan de Ulea. One of the liberal editors fled, but 
his ofiice was wrecked, and his wife was torn from her 
seven children, including a babe at the breast, and sent to 
Belem. A student at the Ohio state university, then in Mex- 
ico, who had participated in the liberal meetings, was called 
from his room to talk over the situation with the soldiers, 
and the next morning his body was found, riddled with bul- 
lets. The same tactics were pursued in other localities where 
the opposition candidate showed strength. Reyes asked an 
interview with the president, but, though he had one time 
been in his cabinet, was denied. On the other hand, his 
resignation as governor, a position he held, was requested 
from the federal authorities. Great was the astonishment 
when he declined to resign. It was only the fact that he 



104 DIAZ the: dictator. 

was popular with the army which prevented his arrest, 
the governor of one of the states was asked to resign, but 
dechned. He visited the capital and presented the matter 
to the president, quoting the words that opposition that 
was loyal would be welcomed, and when he returned to 
his own capital presented his resignation to the legislature. 
The legislature passed a resolution to the effect that it was 
competent to run the affairs of the state. For reply troops 
were hurried to the capital where the legislature was in 
session, and then, with an army surrounding the place of 
its meeting, that body accepted the resignation of the gov- 
ernor. A supporter of the president's policies succeeded by 
appointment. Officers in other sections of Mexico who 
favored the candidacy of General Reyes were turned ou*- 
and Diaz men placed in their stead. 

Then the supporters of Reyes were astonished to read 
that he was selling his property at any price and preparing 
to move to Europe. 

"If an old soldier Hke Reyes can be intimidated in 
this way, then there is no hope for hberty in Mexico," sor- 
rowfully said one of his supporters in Guadalajara. 

"Now," said the president, "we are in control of the 
situation again. Our friends are in a position where they 
can see that the right men are elected." 

In the United States a certain number of the big pa- 
pers approved. One of the leading republican papers of 
the west said : "That President Diaz has pursued the only 
course open to him to accomplish the desired results is 
evident. The masses of the people of Mexico are not yet 
ready for the free ballot and political liberty." 

Another paper declared : "Clearly the fate of Mexico 
is annexation. Diaz, however, will have his day then, con- 
quest from the north. But who will be the conqueror? 
What Aaron Burr foreshadowed and attempted a hundred 
years ago must soon be accomplished." 

Meanwhile, the same doctrines of Machiavelli and 
Nietzsche which had encouraged Diaz were being taught 
to the common people both in Mexico and the United 
States, not by Socialists, but by those who believed in the 
opposite of Socialism, individuaHsm. The teaching to the 



DIAZ the: dictator. 105 

people read : "The guarded treasure hall and iron-clad 
temples of modern kings and presidents, high priests and 
millionaires are positively the richest the world has ever 
known. Bulging are they with vast hoards of silver and 
diamonds and gold. Here, then, is opportunity on a large 
scale. Here is the goal of the Csesars, Nebuchednezars and 
Napoleons in the days that are coming. All is ready and 
prepared for them, even as in olden times. Caesar carried 
off the treasures of Egypt, Greece, Gaul and Rome. Na- 
poleon looted the money vaults of Venice, Vienna, Madrid, 
Berlin and Moscow. London only escaped him. Nebu- 
chednezar plundered the temple of Zion, where the Jews 
kept all their deposits, and drank his wine out of Jehovah's 
pots of gold. Napoleon, Csesar, Nebuchednezar — three 
great men. And in this their greatness consisted — they 
seized their opportunities." 

"With foes all around us," said Diaz below his breath 
while he at once smiled and wept, "the thing to do is to 
strike and strike hard." 



The paper first quoted is The St. Louis Globe-Democrat. The anar- 
chist utterances are from "The Lion's Paw," Chicago. 



106 DIAZ rut DICTATOR. 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

■ THE MEETING OF THE PRESIDENTS. 

The cEivEBRATiON of Mexican independence and the 
celebration of the birthday of the two presidents had been 
postponed for a month because circumstances prevented 
their meeting until that date. But this was all right, be- 
cause the great can do anything, even to changing their 
birthdays. Victoria and Edward of England had done it, 
and why not Daft and Diaz? 

Judge Daft had come from a tour of the United States 
that had covered more ground than a trip around the 
world, SociaHsts and Mexican revolutionists being arrested 
before him and jailed in the towns he approached. He 
was soon to visit for recreation the 160,000-acre ranch of 
his brother farther up the coast. When he arrived at El 
Paso, state and county laws were set aside and military 
law took their place. Ropes fenced in the sidewalk, and 
from early dawn no one was allowed on the streets — none 
but the soldiers. John Murray, of the PoHtical Refugee 
League, was thrust into an unsanitary cell. Detectives and 
plain clothes men were everywhere. Even the citizens 
thought best to remain at home. 

Diaz came in special train to the quaint little 
Cuindad Jaurez, where the great president had awaited 
in vain for American aid in his struggle against despotism, 
bringing his gold mounted carriage, the wonderful china 
plate of the Maximillian administration, two car loads of 
flowers and a car of bunting, lest there might lack the ap- 
pearance of rejoicing. The flags were given out, and soon 
the streets were aflutter with the Mexican colors. Peons 
and revolutionists who had dared to remain in town were 
arrested and hidden away. Soldiers lined the river on 
both sides, standing stiffly in the warm sunlight, listening 
to the murmur of the stream, el dulcisimo murmurar del 
aroyo. 

"Think of them celebrating Mexican independence!" 



DIAZ THK DICTATOR. 107 

said a Greaser on the North Side in low tones to another. 
They had to be guarded in their speech. 

"There are a milhon men in Mexico," was the reply 
of the American addressed, ''who I suppose would gladly 
lay down their lives if they could but assassinate Diaz." 

"Nonsense. Diaz may believe it, but 'tis false. Ten 
million men hate him and his ways, but they leave him to 
nature. His race is nearly run, and when he dies, the 
hand of tyranny will relax on the throats of the poor." 

"But the same things happened in America as in Mex- 
ico. Have we not slums that rival the condition of your 
peons ? Have we not convicts who are practically peonized 
and brutally whipped? Is there not graft in the United 
States ?" 

"Certainly. These things go with the system. They 
are only intensified in Mexico from the fact that in that 
country the Anglo-Saxon, the Spaniard and the Indian met." 

"But are the people of Mexico, with the varying tribes 
and half civilization, fit to rule themselves?" 

"The excuse for tyrants is always that the people are 
not fit to rule themselves. There are many tribes and na- 
tionalities in the United States, it might be urged that they 
are not fit to rule themselves." 

"They tell me," remarked the American in low tones 
to the other, "that the Dictator is so sensitive to criticism 
he declares it a scandal that the peons wear no breeches, 
thus causing adverse criticism. The next thing we know 
he will compel the peons to starve a little more in order 
that they may appear a bit more respectable to critical 
Americans." 

"How is Diaz?" a northern man asked a Texan as he 
stood in the street, awaiting the meeting of the two pres- 
idents. 

"The greatest man who ever lived. Pity we haven't 
one like him in the United States," was the reply. 

"I hear he is severe on the peons and the revolu- 
tionists." 

"Of course he is. That shows his greatness. The 
Greaser is a low order of being, just like the nigger, and 
the only thing to do with him is to keep him in his place." 



108 DIAZ THE DICTATOR. 

Across the river in Mexico they awaited the ceremony 
of celebrating independence. The old bell of liberty, which 
had been rung by Hidalgo in the Httle church at Dolores 
as a signal for the uprising of the people in 1810, had been 
brought on the presidential train from the palace at Chapul- 
tapec in order that the ceremony might be appropriately 
observed. When the hour drew near, the streets were 
thronged under the scorching sun with merchants, soldiers 
and civil officers. Double lines of soldies were formed 
from the presidential train to the customs house, which had 
been practically rebuilt at a cost of $50,000 for the occa- 
sion. The street before had been paved, Grecian pillars 
had added to the architecture of the occasion, and now a 
car load of white and yellow flowers had been used in dec- 
orating the building without and within. The gold adorned 
cache of the president approached in gorgeous formality, 
attended by a strong guard of soldiers. The breast of 
Diaz was covered with decorations, and there was some- 
thing of mediaeval pomp in the proceedings. He approached 
the customs house, he descended from the carriage, he 
ascended the steps, while the people cheered, flags waved 
and cannons boomed. Seizing a Mexican flag, he stepped 
before the liberty bell, which occupied the porch of the 
customs house, and gave it a tap with a hammer, the bell 
ringing clear. Then he pronounced the grito, the Mexican 
cry of independence, ''Viida la indepenciar and the people 
broke into cheers, whistles blew, cannons boomed, fire- 
works hissed and cracked. 

"It was here," said the president, "that Bonito Juarez 
made his capital when he was an exile from Mexico City. 
It was here that he waited for aid from America when 
America was unable to aid. It was here that the friars of 
another century built the cathedral of Guadaloup, from 
which they pressed with civilization and the cross to the 
land north of the Rio Grande. Jaurez's old capitol has 
become the postoffice where the mails are exchanged be- 
tween the two nations. We celebrate here the independ- 
ence which Jaurez thought was gone. We are shortly to 
meet the president of the United States at the place where 



DIAZ THE DICTATOR. 109 

it was thought that America had deserted us. Thus do the 
years bring us progress." 

"But independence does not mean liberty," whispered a 
revolutionist to another, who heard and was not suspected. 

An hour later the cache of the president, attended by 
his personal staff with Pueblo at the head and a large body 
of soldiers to either side, was driven at double quick to the 
international bridge, and across. On the American shore 
they were met by the staff of the American president and 
a body of American soldiers, who formally welcomed the 
Mexican visitors and escorted them to the chamber of 
commerce, amid a blare of trumpets and the boom of 
artillery, where they were formally greeted by Daft. Less 
than a score of persons were permitted to witness the meet- 
ing; and then they went to a banquet which had been 
spread in the chamber of commerce. Though Diaz spoke 
English perfectly, each president conversed in his own 
tongue in a perfunctory way, the speech being interpreted 
back and forth. After the banquet, the Mexican president 
and his party was escorted with military pomp across El 
Chamizal to the bridge, and the party returned to Mexican 
soil. An hour later president Daft, his staff and body- 
guard, passed over the international bridge into Mexican 
territory and he in turn was greeted with cheers and boom- 
ing of cannon. Escorted to the customs house, Daft was 
received by Diaz with pompous ceremony- and formality 
and then conducted within, where another feast had been 
prepared. At the conclusion of the formal welcome the 
American president remarked: 

"Would you grant me a favor of a half hour's in- 
terview ?" 

"With pleasure," replied the Mexican president in 
perfect Enghsh. 

The two men accompanied by one Mexican and no 
American, entered a private apartment and talked. 

"America is a great country," Diaz remaked. "I have 
done much for the people of your land, and still wish their 
good will. But you are becoming powerful, not only on 
the North, but also on the South, thus putting Mexico, as 



110 DIAZ THi: DICTATOR. 

it were, between two jaws. I would greatly appreciate 
the assurance that you have no designs on Mexico." 

"Americans who have invested in Mexico," responded 
Judge Daft, "are very well satisfied with the stable gov- 
ernment and the protection you have given them. So long 
as you are able to maintain such a government, I can as- 
sure you that the United States will have neither occasion 
or desire to interfere. We are glad to see that you appre- 
ciate the need of maintaining the order you have estab- 
lished, and are taking every means to provide a dependable 
successor." 

"You may be assured that I will see that none other 
comes to power during my lifetime. But you must ap- 
preciate that the stability of Mexico is threatened by agi- 
tators who escape to the United States and carry on their 
work of disintegration from there. It would greatly facili- 
tate my work of maintaining order if I had your co-opera- 
tion in quieting this disturbing factor." 

"You shall have that. There would be no occasion 
for the United States to worry over prospective disturb- 
ances if all the Latin American countries were as ably 
governed as is Mexico. Unfortunately such is not the 
case, as you well know. Already we are having threatened 
trouble in the canal zone because of a weak ruler. The 
world looks to us to maintain order, and where a govern- 
ment is incompetent we may be forced to interfere in the 
interest of world peace." 

"I understand, your excellency. Mexico will do what 
she can in co-operating with you to maintain order in the 
countries south of us." 

So ended the interview. It was the end of an epoch, 
the completion of a drama. But ever, as in nature, the 
curtain was ready to arise on a new drama even as it was 
falling on the old. 



Cache — Carriage. 
Grito — A popular cry. 

El dulciamo murmurar del arroyo — 'The rery sweet babbling of the 
stream. 



DIAZ the: dictator. • 111 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

THE NE:W drama OPKNS. 



"On October 16, 1859," commented Mother Jones in 
a speech, "John Brown made his raid on Harper's Ferry. 
It was the beginning of the end of chattel slavery, and 
marked the coming into power of the Republican party. A 
little over a year from that date Lincoln, the emancipator, 
was elected president. On October 16, 1909, just fifty 
years later, a Republican president greets the man who 
enslaved fourteen million human beings. It is the way the 
Republican party celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the 
greatest event in its history, and could not have been more 
appropriately celebrated even by design. It marks the 
beginning of the end of peonage." 

It was also the anniversary of the discovery of Amer- 
ica, a discovery that had made Spain great; and some re- 
membered that Columbus had been put in chains. It was 
only a few days after Spain, at the instigation of the cler- 
icals, had put Ferrer to death, and all the world was pro- 
testing. The stage was set for great things. But first 
came a farce, a sort of "The house that Jack built" affair. 

"It was a great victory," remarked Diaz to Pueblo. 
"I shall now be able to secure the disturbers and silence 
them, even though they may escape across the Rio Grande." 
Pueblo shook his head. "Do you think," inquired the presi- 
dent, "that the American executive failed to show us proper 
respect, coming in citizen's clothes, shabby at that, instead 
of with military pomp, as did I?" 

"That does not matter," replied Pueblo. "Judge Daft 
is merely a drummer for American capitalists, and wore the 
proper uniform for that character. That was not an insult 
to you. But Mexico is between the teeth of America. If 
we fail to satisfy her, the mouth may close." 

And Judge Daft remarked to his private secretary: 
"It will be a great thing for America. We get the Isthmian 
lands, and Mexico's lease of life will depend wholly on 



112 DIAZ THE DICTATOR. 

her ability to maintain order. The Dictator will hereafter 
be under dictation." 

Some New York capitalists were talking over the 
great tour the president had made, when one of them re- 
marked: "He is the most successful getter of business in 
the world today. We shall have our own way in Mexico, 
and besides, will have trade opportunities in the canal zone. 
For twelve years the Republican party maintained a mili- 
tary dictatorship in the South in an effort to find an open- 
ing for capital, but it resulted only in a South solid against 
commercialism. But Judge Daft in one trip opened the 
South, and the dozen southern millionaires that have been 
created in the past few months will help to open a rich 
region in Dixie to development. That, besides Mexico and 
Central America! It has been a great victory for us." 

Violeta was discussing the meeting for which he had 
made arrangements, with an American prelate: "It means 
a triumph for the church," he said. "Not only was the 
American president guest with prelates throughout all the 
journey, thus adding to our immediate prestige, but the 
future of the Republican party, the future of the commer- 
cial development of America, the future of the Dictator in 
Mexico and of Mexican independence, all depend on favor- 
ing the church. Whatever happens we shall win. If Mex- 
ico maintains her independence, American capitalism must 
remember the aid we gave it. If the hand of Diaz fails 
and Americans come into possession of the continent to the 
isthmus, then the entire territory will be Catholic on ballot. 
It is fifty years from Lincoln to Daft. What we lost un- 
der Lincoln we gain under Daft. It is the greatest victory 
the church has gained in centuries." 

"It means the end of Diazism," said the heroine of 
the revolution, Andrae Villareal. "If Diaz carries his 
campaign into the United States, the people of this country 
will rebel at it. If he does not and fails to maintain what 
capitalism calls 'order,' then America will interfere. The 
Dictator, in admitting a foreign people to his land, has been 
caught in the trap of his own making. Sooner or later the 
small capitalists who have invested in Mexico will begin 
to lose, and then they will join the agitators and revolu- 



DIAZ THK DICTATOR. . 113 

tionists, and the poor Mexican will not lift his voice alone.'' 
So came the progressive statement — Diaz, Daft, capi- 
tahsm, clericalism and revolution, each in turn claiming 
victory and each in turn drawing a larger and inclusive 
circle. At the same time things began to happen in accord 
with the agreements made; first, in giving the dictator 
opportunity to maintain order. 

DeLara, the Mexican who had accompanied Turner in 
his visit to the slave regions of Mexico, was arrested and 
thrown into prison on order from Washington, charged 
with being an alien anarchist. Afterward it was shown 
that he was a Socialist organizer, and he was released. 
Carlo de Fornaro, author of the book on "Barbarous Mex- 
ico," was sued for criminal libel by a Mexican editor, and 
a brother of Judge Daft assisted in the prosecution. He 
was found guilty, not of libeling Mexico, but of libeling 
an individual, under laws which made it libel even if the 
publication was true, and sentenced to the tombs. Theresa 
Villareal, going with her father to the old estate is Mexico, 
was arrested and imprisoned, and the Mexican consul at 
El Paso secured the dismissal from work of her more 
revolutionary sister, Andrae Villareal. About the same 
time three American labor leaders, Gompers, Mitchell and 
Morrison, were made amenable to jail sentence for con- 
tempt of court in advising a boycott on an unfair firm. 
Out at Spokane, Wash., 150 Industrial Workers of the 
World were arrested for street speaking, thrown in prisons 
so crowded they could neither sit or recline, fed on bread 
and water, and placed in bull-pens under negro soldiers 
and threat made to deport them. All over the land there 
seemed to be a concerted assault on labor, if not at the 
direction of Diaz, at least in his spirit. Cannon, a repub- 
lican leader, came out in favor of disfranchising the negroes 
of the South, as a means of admitting the Republican party 
and capitalism to Dixie. . 

Then came Act II. Whether a natural development 
or the following of a cue, two Americans participated in a 
revolution in Nicaraugua, and the president of that coun- 
try promptly shot them. Though it may have been cruel 
and uncalled for, after the manner of feudal times, it was 



114 DIAZ THE DICTATOR. 

nothing to what Diaz had done over and over again, even 
to the kilHng of Americans. But diplomatic relations were 
severed with Nicaraugua, and a large fleet was sent to 
''protect American interests" there, while Mexico, free 
from criticism herself, acquisced in the ''maintaining of 
order" in the canal zone. An American protectorate or 
American conquest would give this country new territory 
to exploit, would strengthen her position in the eyes of the 
world, and would place Mexico where she would be at 
the mercy of the United States in case of disturbance, the 
Rio Grande wiped out by investment, and the land already 
invaded and occupied by Americans. 



"So ehdeth the story," remarked the writer to a friend 
who had read the manuscript thus far. 

"Impossible," declared the critic. "You lack two es- 
sential elements. There is no climax, and the action con- 
tinues. There can be no ending here." 

"You lack the discernment which sees, underneath the 
words, the fact that the cycle is completed. The dictator 
has come under the dictation of the capitalists, and, whether 
he remains in power or another succeeds him, still the Mex- 
ican president is no longer anything but a slave driver for 
his masters. In enslaving his people, Diaz has enslaved 
himself. He cannot escape the mastery of the trusts. His 
conquest of Mexico was not for himself or the Mexicans, 
but for the Americans. It has come so quietly that per- 
haps he may not see, even as you failed to see, the hidden 
working of the law. But some day he will know, and the 
knowledge will be his punishment. Ere long, in the process 
of nature, he will die, and then power and wealth will pass 
from his hands, and they who can no longer benefit from 
his services will have no reason to defend his fame. If 
such a situation should come about with a great outward 
show, like war or assassination, you would consider the 
story complete. It is none the less complete because it has 
come unobserved, through the quiet operation of the Great 
Law." 



DIAZ THE DICTATOR. 115 

"Oh, I see you want to close with the wierd and mys- 
terious." 

"Not at all. I want only to show that real law may 
be broken, but never set aside. There is no clap-trap about 
it, like there might be in a general kilHng. The very quiet- 
ness of the closing, when considered in connection with 
the stupendous results, constitutes the greatest possible cH- 
max. There is reserve strength in it." 

"But the action — you leave everything unfinished." 

"But I leave the Finisher. The Power which has 
brought retribution to Diaz remains, to bring about the 
destruction of evil and the establishment of righteousness, 
to complete the unities, both individually and socially. To 
close the book with all things apparently finished would be 
contrary to nature, while the fact that the way lies open 
for further action, coupled with the reveaHng of the quiet 
Force behind things, is assurance that in the end all will 
be well." 



After Christianity 

Tde New Religion and 
tke Coming Kingdom 



This is the title of a new book which I wish to issue dur- 
ing the year 1910. It is not a story, but a book of ex- 
ceptional breadth and depth, involving thirty years of study 
and research into the various lines discussed, together with 
close personal contact with most of them. 

It argues a general ripening of things that point to 
a world crisis at hand — the thing which the Bible calls the 
Judgment Day, but which has been misrepresented by im- 
aginative interpretations. It considers the various forces 
at work at this time to affect the situation, and from an 
analysis of them brings out startling deductions. It shows 
that Socialism, one of these factors, is a perfect analysis 
of capitalist production, but that, because it is not a com- 
plete analysis of socialization, it must undergo changes and 
development. It shows that the scientific method of rea- 
soning has been fostered by the exactitude required of a 
mechanical age, until it is sure to affect the result, but that 
at present it is not true to the exactitude it preaches and 
so will be forced to drop hypotheses and the unproven 
theories, including the doctrine of evolution of species as 
well as many other things. It shows that organized reli- 
gion, under the influence of new methods of reasoning, 
will, as it is already beginning to do, cease to emphasize 
rites and ceremonies and unessential dogmas, and in doing 
this will come to a better understanding of the Christ-plan, 
which looked beyond the heavenly calling or Christianity 
to the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. 

These three mental contestants for world dominance 



AFTER CHRISTIANITY. 117 

will necessarily clash, not because antagonistic in ideals, 
but because of material interests, and in the contest already 
in progress, will mutually affect each other. The law of 
the battle is this : After the contest a compromise. 

Again : CapitaHst production, being the most volatile 
and quick in action of any form of human organization, 
will be able to influence the general result. It may in the 
long run defeat the aims of altruism in all these move- 
ments, and in the interest of exploitation lead to the scrip- 
tural "time of trouble, such as never hath been from the 
foundation of the world." But this will constitute the 
essential idea of Judgment, and will overthrow evil for 
the coming of good. In the new order there will be: 
Fuller socialization than Socialism contemplates ; complete 
scientific methods, both as to analysis and also as to life 
and production ; the completion of religious unity and power 
in the universal Kingdom of Heaven on earth, rather 
than industrial democracy, and an ending of the prepara- 
tory work, Christianity; all of which was involved in the 
Christ-idea and plan. 

The book is a close analysis, and as such is fearless 
and cutting. But it is not an attack on anything; more 
than this, by virtue of the author having been connected 
with all the movements and understanding their spirit from 
personal contact, it is thoroughly sympathetic. In develop- 
ing these points there are analyses of many other things, 
such as world philosophies, "rehgions" and bibles, historical 
epochs, world-dominating ideas, etc., etc. 

Following are a few extracts to illustrate the manner 
of treatment. The entire work will contain, over three 
hundred pages and the book will sell at $1 per copy. It 
is not in type. I want aid to print it, for it will cost at 
least $500 ; therefore, I ask YOU to send in your sub on 
the blank at back, payable when book is ready for press, 
sending no money now. See blank at back. 

THE NEW RELIGION. 

I. IT IS ALREADY HERK. 

1. The **New Religion" is already here, beginning to 



118 AfTKR CHRISTIANITY. 

find expression in a world-impulse. It was grown out of 
the world impulse that preceded it — that is, the commercial 
idea; therefore, it is legitimate and connects with the past. 
But the child has not yet been named; that is, it has not 
been expressed in words. Neither has it learned yet to 
consciously connect with its forbears and the environments 
that surround it; that is, it is not yet en rapport with 
Christianity and with all the religious impulses that pre- 
ceded it, nor does it harmonize with the rationalism of 
the day. In other words, it has no name, and lacks yet 
an essential education which will come later on; but it 
exists. If I were asked to name it I would call it the 
Social Impulse. It is the natural and inevitable offspring 
of commercialism, whose province it was to discover the 
world and put it into close relationship. The commercial 
impulse, which has been the essential religious expression 
of the last five centuries, conceived the social idea more 
than a century ago, when government was socialized. That 
idea has been developing in the minds of men, growing 
into socialized roads, schools, courts, and such like, until 
it is now in the minds and hearts of millions, an actual 
new social order. This mental and spiritual impulse is 
the new religion, or, more correctly speaking, the new 
expression of religion. Yet it doesn't understand itself as 
yet, nor is it understood. While it will make the world 
anew according to its own plan, it must fulfill that which 
has gone before or it will not be true. It must be conserva- 
tive of past and present good, or its radicalism will be 
vain. But it will be adequate. 

2. Religion is ever that which it seeks. Under Moses 
it was the impulse to escape slavery and obtain a rich land 
to possess. Under the Jewish kings it was "to be as other 
nations" and try man-rule. Under Christianity, it was a 
spiritual contest or ''election of grace' preparatory to estab- 
lishing the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. Since the dis- 
covery of America this has been, of necessity, modified 
and dominated by commercialism. As such it has made 
the world one, so that, even now, there is really but one 
world-impulse, namely, the commercial. And this has not 
only brought the social impulse, but it has also prepared 



AFTER CHRISTIANITY. ' 119 

the world for one impulse, for a world-religion, if you 
please. This in turn is the completion of the Christ-idea, 
and harmonizes with all other things. 

3. The "reHgion" is already here. It is of no man's 
making. But it awaits development, a name and an un- 
derstanding of itself. 

II. CONFLICTING IDFAS. 

1. The reason why the new impulse is not yet able to 
go alone is because three nurses are seeking to mother 
and sustain it ; three speciaHsts, if you please, are trying to 
give it direction and coax it to go their way. 

2. First of these is the old phase of religion — the 
spiritual aspect. It is unquestioned that the Christian 
church has for centuries made the spiritual the central 
phase of its agitation; and not only so, but the same is 
true of practically every other department of religious ex- 
pression — the Mohammedan, Buddhist, and what-not. The 
spiritual expression has been universal. 

3. Second of these specialists who are seeking to ex- 
press the new phase of religion that is already here, are 
the rationalists, the naturalists and scientists. They are 
inadequate alone. They would to a large extent banish 
the spiritual phase and rewrite the Bible to conform to 
their own understanding of things. 

4. Third of these specialists who are seeking, some- 
what bhndly, to express the new phase of religion, are the 
Socialists. This is the most vital of the three aspects, and 
really the essence of all. 

5. All these as specialists unduly emphasize the phase 
they represent, yet each of these phases must have a place 
in the new expression of religion just as it has already a 
place in the new aspect of religion now in existence. The 
sharpness of antagonism which characterizes each must 
wear away before the new phase of religion can be ade- 
quately worded, admitting all to consideration, and being 
true to facts. 

6. It is as impossible to formulate a *'new religion" 
that shall stand of itself as it would be to create a child 
without parentage. The new expression of religion must 



120 AFTE:r CHRISTIANITY. 

take into consideration the old expression out of which it 
was born, and connect with the spiritual phase and the 
Christ-idea, just as the child must recognize and resemble 
its parents and just as the new social order must connect 
with the old social order. That rationalism which would 
reject the Christ-plan and the supernatural (which is only 
the higher aspect of the spiritual) will find itself lacking 
an element without which it can be only religious atheism 
— for that is possible. At the same time the spiritual aspect 
which has been too "other-worldly," which has failed to 
see that under the Christ-plan an end of the spiritual call 
was contemplated from the first, that the spiritual call 
was only a part looking to better things beyond, and no 
human representative of Christ, no vicegerency is adequate, 
will find itself abandoned and marooned. There is a revolt 
against dogma, which must be considered in expressing 
the new aspect of religion in words ; but the new dogmas 
of affirmations and of speculations said to be science will 
yet find themselves under the same ban that the old dog- 
mas are. Thoughtful men are ceasing to care for dis- 
cussions of baptisms, rites and doctrines that are unessen- 
tial; but they will also doubt that ah is mind, all is spirit, 
all is matter, and other dogmas of the rationalism and new 
school of religions and scientific expression. Again, there 
is a tremendous agitation for socialization; but the organ- 
ized movement toward this is both unsocialistic and dog- 
matic. The impulse is an aspiration which must find place 
in the new statement of religion; but the revolt against 
dogma will yet reject in this unorganized feeling the doc- 
trines that now are insisted on, and the effort to confine 
it to a party. This impulse will find ultimate expression 
in a demand for all good things for all creatures, and is, 
perhaps, the most vital aspect of the new religious expres- 
sion that has yet manifested. But when it becomes fully 
rational it will reject both party and church as inadequate 
and necessarily partial and unsocial. 

III. fui.fii,i.mi:nt. 
1. The new aspect of religion, then, will not stand 



AFTER CHRISTIANITY. • 121 

alone, neither will it be partial, but it will be a fulfillment 
of all that has gone before ; it will be social and complete. 

2. As a fulfillment it will be true to the Christ-idea, 
perhaps not to our idea of the Christ-idea, but to the real 
scriptural idea which prompted the most extensive and 
most lasting plan and propaganda the world has ever 
known. In doing this it will not be untrue to Buddhism, 
Zoroasterism or Mohammedanism, but will fulfill them, 
too. Be it remembered that there has been but one Christ- 
plan, but one who claimed to be Christ. Buddha and 
Zoroaster were teachers, philosophers, whose ideals in no 
way conflict with the Christ-plan. Mohammed was one 
who sought to his understanding to forward the Christ- 
plan. The Christ-plan is inclusive of all of these. It is 
also inclusive of the Jewish movement, of the Christian 
movement, of rationalism, of spiritual power, and of the 
Socialist ideal. It is political, involving a spiritual rule 
and the overthrow of man-rule. It is spiritual, involving 
the call to a higher state through new birth, and a spiritual 
rule of the Kingdom of Heaven. It is rational, in that it 
involves a return to natural law and the abrogation of 
artificial rules falsely called law. It is socialistic, in that 
it makes earth belong to the Creator, and all creatures, not 
man alone, heirs thereto; it involves also ultimate spiritual 
power for all. It is complete, because it considers both 
natural and spiritual needs, both man and beast, and salva- 
tion of earth itself from rigors of cold arid heat and from 
conditions that are disagreeable. It must be considered, 
because it has been developing for four thousand years; 
it is world wide; it has progressed to where, according to 
its own forecast, its future rulers are all chosen, and where 
it can become effective. 

4. Indeed, because there never has been but one plan 
which involved complete salvation for earth and all things 
therein. The new impulse, the new "rehgion," if you please, 
is an enlargement of that, just as Christianity was an en- 
largement of the Jewish plan. It is like a human being, 
who, while ever the same identity, varies as a baby, a 
child, a youth and a man. 

5. Even if Jesus never should return to set up the 



l22 AFTER CHRISTIANITY. 

Kingdom of Heaven as he promised to do, even if there 
never was such a man, it will be necessary to fulfill the 
Christ-plan and to do ourselves the work which it lays 
out to do. It involves a return to natural life and an end 
to artificialities, including rule of one man over others. 
There can obviously be no end of subjugation until this 
occurs. Yet, with our long teaching to the contrary, a 
return to nature now would realize our worst fears of 
anarchy. It will be necessary, if there be no annointed, 
to bridge this chasrh, to invent a spiritual rule which we 
shall uphold as authoritative, all-seeing and all-powerful 
as a restraint on the miseducated while we are breaking 
down our artificialities and ending the subjugation of one by 
another. No other plan is complete enough, or is adequate. 



THE CHRIST PLAN. 

III. CHRISTIANITY. 

1. Indeed, there is no scriptural authority for Chris- 
tianity. The term came as a word of derision, applied first 
at Antioch. Throughout Acts the organization is called 
"the church," without specification of ''Christian," and the 
followers are termed "disciples" or "they of this Way." 
Of course, the name does not amount to much, except as 
it leads to results or misconceptions. But accepting the 
term of Christian led to a limiting of the plan to what 
might be involved in the ofiice of "Christ" and therein the 
name became bad. Where the plan involved a future 
"reign on the earth" a "new heaven and a new earth 
wherein dwelleth righteousness," accepting a name that 
could not cover all this naturally limited the whole work 
to a presentation of the narrow way, which was only the 
beginning of the work. The social aspect of the gospel 
was forgotten. 

2. There can be no "Christian" religion, just as there 
can be no "Christian' science and no "Christian" intellect. 
There never have been these things. There is a Christ- 
plan, there has been a Christian theology and a Christian 
church, but religion, being a faculty that existed prior to 



AFTKR CHRISTIANITY. 123 

even the Bible, is neither Christian, Buddhist, Mohamme- 
dan or Pagan. It is merely rehgion. It may be variously 
developed in various people; it may have different char- 
acteristic in different ages, in different nations ; but it is 
still religion. It may be enlightened or superstitious, the 
highest attribute of man, or the most bigoted and vicious 
element possible, still it is reHgion. There having been no 
''Christian" religion, no Buddhist religion, all should feel 
themselves free to accept a new interpretation which pre- 
sents at once a fulfillment and more abundant opportunity. 
If Jesus Himself had not set a Hmit to the propaganda he 
organized, the propaganda which learned to call itself Chris- 
tianity — in the words, "This gospel of the kingdom must 
first be preached throughout all the world for a witness, 
and then shall the end (of it) come" — we might question 
the new work; but with these words before us, and with 
an understanding that the plan of salvation includes sev- 
eral aspects, we ought not to oppose the new impulse that 
is stirring the world. 



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